Mark Dawes, Religion Editor

Rev L. Christopher Mason. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

"I have found it very rewarding. You don't see the same people everyday. It is not the same routine everyday."

Chaplaincy Ministries are many and varied. There are chaplaincies for schools, hospitals, prisons, the police service, the national football teams, and even for the horse-racing industry. But have you ever heard of a port chaplaincy?

If you want to know more about port chaplaincy, then the person to ask is the Rev. L. Christopher Mason.

Mason, 44, is the Minister at the Portmore United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in Portmore, Bridgeport, St Catherine. For the past seven years he has been doing extensive ministry at the Port of Kingston.

The clergyman, a 1990 graduate of the United Theological College of the West Indies reserves two days per week for ministry on Kingston's ports.

Port chaplaincy is not a new concept. In Jamaica, Mason explained, his denomination has been diligent in offering this voluntary service for more than 40 years at the Port of Kingston and other ports in the country.

At present there also part time port chaplains operating in the ports of Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.

Crucial job

The Port of Kingston. - File

Indeed there is an international body of port chaplains - The British & International Sailors' Society - of which Mason is a member and from which he has received training. As a member of this organisation, he is required to send back to England, regular reports on his ministry.

The Roman Catholic Church has priests assigned to all the ports around the world.

Port chaplaincy, he explained is "the church reaching out to seafarers all across the world."

Mason explained that the sailors recruited to work on ships are often drawn from poverty-stricken circumstances and are often given extremely low wages. Sometimes when they arrive in Jamaica, they have been at sea for many months and during that time have had little or no contact with their families in their homeland. Furthermore, they have little sense of what is happening in the news - in their homeland and the wider world.

It is against that background, he stressed that the work of port chaplains is particularly crucial and meaningful to these seafarers.

"We (the port chaplains) are their only source of contact with the rest of the world when they come into port. A lot of these seafarers they are on the ships for sometimes eight to 11 months and away from home.

Seaman's Centre

To keep the seamen in the loop, he often downloads newspaper articles from their homeland and give it to them. Sometimes, he is himself unable to read these articles as they are published in a foreign language. "They are always grateful and sometimes elated at this because they are otherwise cut off from their country," he said.

In other countries there is a Seaman's Centre which is operated by the port chaplain. In this facility seafarers can make contact with their families via telephone, internet, of post a letter. Jamaica, however, does not now have any such facility. Hence the sailors' greater dependence on port chaplains to help them make contact with their families.

Mason explained that no longer do ships spend two or three weeks in a port unloading. It is more like five hours these days, he said. So sometimes the seafarers are not in Jamaica for long.

Gives encouragement

Greenpeace activists hangs a banner on a cargo container loaded with electronic waste during a demonstration at a port in Hong Kong, last Saturday. Greenpeace activists boarded the cargo ship Yang Ming Success and prevented the offloading of an container of waste electronic devices from Port of Oakland in the United States, on its way to China, via Hong Kong. The activists demanded that Hong Kong authorities refuse entry of the container and return it to the US. - AP

"We try and contact their families. We give encouragement. We speak hope to them. We also try to deal with the problems they might have with the shipping companies, and the contracts they might have.

The challenges in port chaplaincy are diverse. Mason said: "You have times when seafarers might come into the country and the ship they travelled on might have been sold and they did not know. So you have them stranded in the country. Part of the chaplain's responsibility is to interact with them and their agent to find out what is happening and to make contact with their homeland through the chaplains in that country to tell them the situation and ask them to assist them to get back to their homeland. Also as a port chaplain I am sometimes called upon to help the stranded seafarers obtain visas and the necessary safe passage documentation to leave Jamaica. The job requires that the port chaplain to be the liaison between the seafarers and the embassies and consulates.

Sometimes too, he said, the seafarers are stranded in Jamaica and have not been paid for a long time. In those circumstances, the port chaplain has to assist with the welfare needs which includes sourcing food for them by knocking on the doors of shipping companies, churches, embassies, and the private sector.

The seafarers come from many countries around the world - including non-English-speaking nations. But there is usually at least one person on board each ship that speaks English well enough to function as a kind of interpreter for him. In other cases where the foreign language is too steep a challenge and no one on board can be found who speaks English, Mason will usually solicit and receive an interpreter from the locally-based consulates and embassies.

Seamen reaction

A lot of seafarers who come to Jamaican ports are from the Philippines a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is strong and dominant. Mason told stories how when boarding ships, Filipino crew would ask "Are you a padre? (i.e., are you a Roman Catholic priest?). When he replies that he is not, many times the seaman expresses a lack of interest in talking with him.

Muslim seafarers, on the other-hand, he said, are far more open and receptive to his ministry. Muslims he said often will share their personal experiences, their faith and even talk with him about Jesus.

On a typical day at the port, Mason will board up to 10 ships to have a pastoral visit with the crew. He has had to minister to the depression and loneliness of the sailors and even some of their suicidal inclinations.

As a minister of the gospel, Mason also has an evangelistic intent in boarding ships. He acknowledged that after ministering to a few sailors, they became born-again believers in Jesus Christ.

But his mission is not just to the seafarers. His work also allows him to do ministry with the Jamaicans who work on the port - including those who work in administration. Mason, who is always on 24-hour call, has been called in sometimes to counsel with port staff in the midst of trauma. Sometimes, too persons are referred to him for behavioural related counselling.

Providing love and care

There is need for more port chaplains, Mason readily acknowledges. The clergyman is so committed to this ministry that he has commenced dialogue with his denomination towards releasing him so that he can become a full-time chaplain to the port.

There is scope too for churches to get involved in the pastoral and welfare needs of seafarers for "these are human beings in need of love and care", he said. Churches, he said, can collaborate with port chaplains, to lobby the international shipping authorities to ensure that seafarers receive decent pay.

After seven years of service as port chaplain Mason is not slowing down. He is in dialogue with his denomination to go full-time in this area of pastoral endeavour. "I have found it very rewarding. You don't see the same people everyday. It is not the same routine everyday." But he said, there is room and scope for more persons to serve as port chaplains.

Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com