The rocking life of a cruise liner chaplain

Serving as chaplain on a cruise sounds like the plushest job in the priesthood, but providing pastoral care to crew and passengers is hard work, as STUART GRAHAM reports.

Cruising the oceans from one memorable port to the next may sound like the dream job, but for a ship’s chaplain it can be draining work.

Apart from celebrating Mass, officiating at golden wedding jubilees and holding confessions, there’s the separating of passengers squabbling over chairs in the dining hall, making double-sure tour groups return to the ship after an onshore excursion, and of course, there’s the endless conversations.

But for Fr Stefan Hippler, a German priest who works among the poor through the HOPE Cape Town Aids project, the annual jaunts as a chaplain on the world’s most luxurious cruise ships are a way of bridging the gap between the wealthy and the underprivileged.

“It’s an artificial world and people like me have to make sure that passengers have the holiday of a lifetime,” Fr Hippler told The Southern Cross, shortly after returning from a cruise of the Baltic Sea on the German-owned ocean liner MS Artania.

“I do use the chance to speak to passengers about HOPE and the work we are doing in South Africa. It’s fascinating. Africa always triggers a lot of talks. After giving a lecture people will approach me and ask about my work. They want to know more.”

He’s often touched when HIV-positive people approach him and open up about having the disease.

The rich, said Hippler, need spiritual help as much as the poor do.

“When you hear stories from parents about drug-addicted sons and various other dramas, you realise that money can buy you a lot, but it cannot buy you happiness or a life that is meaningful.”

 

The hedonism of 24-hour buffets and constant entertainment on offer is a factor Fr Hippler grapples with, especially in the context of his work among the poor in townships around Cape Town.

“I have learned to live in two worlds. In a world of poverty and a world of indulgence,” he said. “I consider myself a bridge between the two.”

It’s the petulance of passengers after several days at sea that is most difficult to deal with, he said.

People, Fr Hippler explained, will fight over a seat in a bus or a row will erupt when one blocks another’s view when they are taking a photograph during an evening show.

“We do have fights on board and I have had to step in to resolve them. When you are at sea for five or six days, people get worked up. Depending on the mood, it can become quite aggressive.”

Fr Hippler recalled an incident in which a male passenger grew agitated while on a glass-bottomed boat tour over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

“He had paid to see a shark, and no shark was coming,”  Fr Hippler recalled. “The situation grew more and more tense, and eventually I had to calm him down.”

Fr Hippler said he told the passenger: “Sir, you may come to my church service for free this Sunday. You don’t have to put any money in the collection plate.”

“Everyone laughed and he calmed down.”

Another drama occurred when a man collapsed next to where Fr Hippler was sitting. Luckily the priest had done a first aid course and could stabilise the man.

“It came out that he was cruising with his girlfriend, and that his wife didn’t know about it. His girlfriend wanted to split from him. She didn’t want to be associated with a sick man.”

The cruise chaplaincy becomes especially taxing at Christmas time, said Fr Hippler.

“You will have 100 single people just fleeing Christmas. They demand to talk. They stand around waiting for you, and when you’re free they move in,” he said.

“It may sound like the dream job, but you have your work cut out for you. It’s 24/7 of endless conversation. When I come out of my cabin, people are waiting for me,” he said, adding that both passengers and crew make use of his pastoral services.

“I really don’t have a free minute. When you go back to your cabin you feel as though the life has been sucked out of you.”

When Fr Hippler returns to Cape Town after a cruise, it’s normally with rings under his eyes.

“When I come home people ask me: ‘How was your holiday?’ All I can do is to sigh.”

Still, he’s willing to go back for more. In January he’ll take a cruise from Marseilles to Santiago.

And he will reprise his chaplaincy on a German reality television show, Verrückt nach Meer (Crazy for the Sea), which has already run for four seasons.

“The first season on which I appeared was so successful, the broadcaster called me back to do another 50 episodes to be filmed over seven weeks,” Fr Hippler said.

But despite the long hours, the work on board ship is rewarding.

“I go back again because you encounter all walks of life on board ships. That’s a challenge that I like.”

Only once has he experienced a death at sea and it was a friend of his, a captain, found dead in his room after a heart attack.

“I knew him well. He was a friend of mine. We held a service for him and then life went back to normal. The ‘dream world’ goes on,” the priest reflected.

Fr Hippler says as a European—he is a German—he knows that  people are no longer heading to churches in the numbers they did in the past.

“Most people are not bound to a parish anymore,” he said. “They are more mobile than they were in earlier times.”

His ship’s chaplaincy is a response to the priest’s call to mission and evangelisation.

“We have to go where the people are,” he said. And some are to be found on the high seas.