“[Prayer] builds hope. People feel connected to a loving force in the universe, and that can help them feel hopeful and held when life puts them into difficult circumstances,” said Rebecca Randall, GRE ’14, a licensed mental health counselor in New York City. 

With so many people turning to pastoral counselors for solace during the pandemic, these mental health professionals have had to wrestle with tough questions and adapt to caring for their clients from afar. In phone interviews, Randall and her fellow alumni and faculty from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education’s pastoral mental health counseling program described the impact of the pandemic on their clients and how COVID-19 has changed the nature of spiritual care. 

‘Where is God in All of This?’

For years, many of Cynthia Wicker Williams’s clients came to her with anxieties concerning their everyday lives. But when the pandemic arrived in March, the reasons for their anxiety changed significantly, Williams said. Many older folks in church communities are now experiencing loneliness and fear of dying alone from COVID-19. Other clients are on the brink of an existential crisis. 

“What’s going on? Is the world falling apart? How am I to live in this chaotic world?” said Williams, GRE ’09, a licensed mental health counselor and pastoral psychotherapist in Connecticut, recanting some of the questions her clients are grappling with. “It’s an existential kind of anxiety that people are presenting right now.”  

Two months later, another bombshell hit the nation: the murder of George Floyd. Williams said her clients became more anxious about race relations in the U.S. How did I not know that people were being treated so badly, they wondered? What do I do now that I know this? And how can I live a more meaningful and moral life? 

“The existential questions people are asking right now are exactly the reason why we need pastoral psychotherapists,” Williams said. “We are trained to lean into the question of, what does it mean? Where is God in all of this? Why is God not fixing this? Why did God let this happen?”

Living with Ambiguity

Williams said she helps her clients find those answers within. She might explore the teachings and holy writings of their religion with them and see if those lead to answers. Sometimes she explores a client’s strengths and what gives meaning to their life. 

Randall, a pastoral counselor at the St. Francis Counseling Center in Manhattan, said that there’s power in prayer, too. 

“An active prayer life can anchor people, give them hope, and connect them to a larger [faith]community,” Randall said. “They feel less alone and isolated, even if they’re praying alone.”

Another way to deal with pandemic-related anxiety at home is to use “contemplative spiritual practices” that calm the stress and anxiety regions of the brain, said Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., associate professor of pastoral mental health counseling and pastoral psychotherapist at the Lutheran Counseling Center in New York. 

Life hasn’t been easy for counselors, either. Bingaman said his students who are pastoral care providers are no longer able to provide care in person to clients with the coronavirus. They can speak over the phone, but it’s not the same. 

“Historically, it’s always been the bedside thing of being there in person, praying for the person. We have the technology to still do that [from afar], but this is such a shift, and I don’t know if it’s going to change anytime soon,” Bingaman said. “We all hope a vaccine comes our way sooner than later, but this is kind of the way of the future, even if we get to the other side of this.” 

‘We’re in the Same World as Our Patients Now’

But people have also shown incredible resilience and adaptability, said Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D., assistant professor of pastoral counseling and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice. In a matter of days, her clients transitioned to working from home and being with their families in a different light. Cataldo herself figured out how to conduct virtual therapy in both an efficient and ethical manner—how to properly light herself on camera, how to create an environment as safe and comfortable for her clients as her physical office once was. 

When the pandemic is over, our society is going to feel the collective impact of hundreds of thousands of people who have died, said Cataldo. But she’s also inspired by many of her long-term patients who have shown a tremendous amount of growth over the past few months. In the midst of a pandemic, they’re slowly finding their center, she said. 

“In a crisis situation, people’s priorities have shifted. They realize life is short and precarious. So not a lot of time to just spin your wheels about stuff you’ve been struggling with for a long time,” said Cataldo. “That’s inspiring to me. That helps me, because clinicians are struggling too. We’re in the same world as our patients now.” 

“After a decade of teaching yoga and philosophy at my studio, I realized that I wanted to help people in a more direct way by becoming a mental health professional as well as a yogi,” Robles, GRE ’21, said. “I believe that spirituality—sometimes, but not always in the form of religion—is a central concern for many people.”

‘Throwing Gasoline Onto A Fire, But With Meditation’

As a child, Robles scoffed at the notion of yoga. 

“When I was a kid, I turned my nose up at the asana stuff,” Robles said. “It was like glorified gymnastics. I was like, how does that help you be spiritual?”

As he grew older, he became intrigued by meditation and philosophy. When he met his wife Adrea in his late twenties, she introduced him to yoga. In 2004, he took his first yoga class. He was hooked. 

“It was like throwing gasoline onto a fire, but with meditation,” Robles said. “I knew this philosophically, but I didn’t experience it [until then].”

He became a certified yoga teacher and in 2008, opened a small, suburban yoga studio with his wife in Mahopac, New York. At the time, it was a big risk. The 2008 financial crisis had just surfaced, but it was too late to back out of their new business venture—by that point, they had already signed the building lease. But their new studio, Liberation Yoga & Wellness Center, made it through the crisis. This September will mark 12 years that they’ve been open.

Now the studio faces new challenges, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it closed on March 16, the Liberation Yoga & Wellness Center has pivoted to online offerings, but Robles and his wife said they plan to open in a limited capacity around July 4.

“Many studios in the Hudson Valley have already closed their doors permanently, but so far, Liberation’s tight-knit community has supported us. While we remain anxious about our future, we hope to be able to continue to serve the area for a long time to come,” he said.

Teaching a Future Generation of Yogis 

Throughout the years, Robles said he noticed that some of his clients were mulling over their personal problems at the studio. They approached him after class and asked him for advice on multiple issues: marital drama, questions about spirituality and finding meaning in life, even domestic abuse. But Robles had neither the training nor the certification to answer their questions. 

Those encounters helped inspire him to become a mental health professional in addition to being a yogi. In 2018, he became a full-time student at Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education in the pastoral mental health counseling program. 

“I wasn’t aware of just how much of a connection there was [between yoga practice and mental health]until I started this program and started talking to a lot of the priests and nuns here … A lot of people end up going to a church not entirely for spiritual guidance, but also for mental health reasons. They’re much more comfortable talking to a priest than to a doctor, psychologist or therapist, sometimes. And I realized that that’s exactly what’s happening in my yoga studio,” Robles said. “It gathers people who are looking for healing, and frequently, what they’re needing is more than a yoga teacher or priest.” 

He said his Fordham lessons—in particular, an ethics course and a trauma elective—have changed the way he views yoga. 

For years, it was a commonplace practice—not only in his studio, but places worldwide—for teachers to touch a client’s body and correct their posture without asking for permission. After becoming more aware of trauma and how physical touch can trigger a traumatic reaction, Robles introduced a new method for clients to communicate whether they wanted a “physical assist” or vocal directions: wooden chips that say “Yes, assist” on one side and “Please refrain” on the other. 

“It’s something that I’m only even now, through this program, becoming more aware of—just the sheer prevalence of trauma in the yoga room. Once you start to see it, and you’re trained to look for it, it’s everywhere,” said Robles, who introduced the new technique to his clients this past winter. “With COVID-19, the issues of touch may be a moot point for a long time, but the shift of thinking to being more mindful and respectful of differences in how touch and personal space is experienced will remain. In fact, such considerations may become even more important in the long run due to the pandemic.”

Ultimately, Robles wants to become a full-time mental health counselor, while continuing to work with clients at the Liberation Yoga & Wellness Center with his wife.

“I believe my experiences as a yoga teacher will greatly inform my counseling, and I hope that once I’m fully licensed, I will be able to offer some expertise to the community of yoga teachers in the form of workshops or continuing education,” he said.

That includes teaching yogis-in-training about trauma-informed yoga practices—something he himself wasn’t trained on, he said. 

“The real thing that’s going to benefit my yoga community is additional training for my staff and teachers on how to handle those situations when they arise with more grace and certainty … really knowing what the resources are and learning how to recognize certain things,” said Robles, who will intern at a trauma-specialized counseling center next year.

In the future, he said, he sees yoga teachers taking spirituality to a new level. 

“As a friend of mine who’s a Unitarian minister says,” said Robles, “Yoga teachers are the new clergy.”

Caballero Jaime is a pastoral mental health counseling student at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. This May, she will graduate with her master’s degree and plans to transition in the future from her full-time job as a liaison at the Mexican consulate in New York City to a job in her new field. 

“I would like to continue helping women especially, and children, to be with them in this journey they have, and try to help them in any way possible as a pastoral mental health counselor,” Caballero Jaime said. 

An Immigrant from Mexico

Caballero Jaime was born and raised in Mexico City, the fifth most densely populated city in the world, according to the United Nations. She grew up in a conservative Catholic family with her parents and two older brothers. Her father, a lawyer, passed away when she was 9 years old, but instilled a love for reading and writing in his daughter—“one of the best presents you could ever have,” said Caballero Jaime. 

She said she also found a role model in her mother, a family housewife who became a vice-director in a cosmetics company. 

“I am here because of her hard work,” she said. 

Caballero Jaime went on to serve as deputy director of public relations for the Senate of the Republic of Mexico and political adviser for the National Action Party in Mexico City. In 2008, she moved to the U.S. to work for the Consulate General of Mexico in New York, where she currently works to assist the Mexican population living in the tri-state area. The consulate provides passports, IDs, records, visas, and consultations on protection and community affairs. Its members travel to more than 60 locations, including regions that are eight hours away from its main office in Manhattan.

“She articulates a deep desire to improve the quality of life of Mexican immigrants in the United States,” said Faustino “Tito” Cruz, S.M., dean of GRE. “In many ways, she is an insider-outsider who attempts to address both the personal and systemic/communitarian quest for human dignity.”

Five years ago, she realized she wanted to help people in a different way. From 2015 to 2018, she served as a pastoral care volunteer at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, where she supported patients with neurocognitive disorders, addictions, trauma, and terminal illnesses. It was an eye-opening experience that made her want to do more, she said. 

One day, she sought advice from her pastor. “I think I have this call[ing],” she remembered telling him. “I think you should look at this,” he said, pulling out a copy of Fordham Magazine and showing her a story referring to the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. Later that night, she returned home and browsed the GRE website. She was hooked. 

‘You Are Here, and You Are More Than Welcome’

For three years, she learned about a new world. Instead of studying translation and political science, as she had done for her prior degrees, she learned about psychopathology and diagnosis, trauma, and ethics. She studied religion and theology from different perspectives and learned how important it is to embrace the culture and country you come from. In a supervised clinical internship at the Family Health Centers at NYU Langone in Brooklyn this year, she said she realized the need for bilingual psychotherapists—especially with a background like her own.

“One of my patients, I remember, she told me when she first saw me, she thought, oh my goodness, she’s not going to understand where I am coming from because she’s white,” said Caballero Jaime. “She said she felt identified when I described myself. I said, ‘Well, my name is María, I’m Mexican, and I’m also an immigrant.’ That was the link. That was the click.” 

She said that experience reminds her of one of the most important lessons she learned from GRE. 

“It’s something that Fordham has taught me. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It doesn’t matter if you are Latina, if you are Chinese, Korean, Egyptian. You are here, and you are more than welcome,” Caballero Jaime said. 

In the years ahead, Caballero Jaime said she wants to empower her clients, especially women who have been physically or sexually abused. And no matter what that role looks like, Caballero Jaime will do a great job, said one of her mentors at GRE. 

“She’s very impressive, personally, intellectually, and in her own work in pastoral counseling studies,” said Francis X. McAloon, S.J., associate professor of Christian spirituality and Ignatian studies at GRE, to whom Caballero Jaime served as a research assistant for three years. “She is a godsend, really. And I know whatever she’s going to pursue in the future—presumably some kind of pastoral counseling practice—she’ll do a great job.”

“We are to care for the habitat because it is essential to our care for others. To care for our habitat is to care for ourselves,” said the guest speaker, Ryan LaMothe, Ph.D., professor of pastoral care and counseling at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Indiana. “We can continue to care for people who are suffering from various maladies, psychological and physical, yet we must also keep in mind these larger forces and consider ways to intervene.” 

This year, the annual conference was called “Between Hope and Despair: Caring in the Age of Climate Crisis.” In a series of three hour-long lectures, LaMothe spoke about how climate change could affect pastoral theology and care, identifying challenges for caregivers and offering solutions. 

A Lesson from Mister Rogers

The effects of climate change are more significant than ever, said LaMothe. Over the past three centuries, global carbon dioxide levels have risen from 270 parts per million to well over 400, he said, adding that today’s situation is serious. The rise of greenhouse gases have melted glaciers, increased sea levels, and created catastrophic storms; those who receive the brunt of the damage are the poor and people of color. And people around the world—including his clients—are starting to feel anxious, said LaMothe. 

Our biggest challenges toward making our world green again include global capitalism, which exploits people and natural resources in the pursuit of profit, and nationalism, which keeps us from working toward the common good on a global scale, he said. 

It’s also difficult to change our lives for the Earth’s well-being. We’re all busy—with our careers, with raising kids, and being involved in our local communities, he said. But people, including pastoral caregivers, can still make a difference. 

“In terms of pastoral theology and pastoral care, we need to become more versed in making use of our disciplines as we seek to organize and cooperate with others with the aim of caring for the Earth and its residents,” LaMothe said, to an audience of more than 50 educators, students, spiritual care providers, and clinical practitioners. 

With clients, pastoral caregivers can use spiritual practices to facilitate mindfulness about the environment, he said. He encouraged the audience to view their vocation through a more communal lens—to see the Earth and humanity as a whole. He asked the audience to practice “personal recognition”—recognizing every client for who they are—as most famously shown by Fred Rogers, an American television personality and Presbyterian minister who hosted the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Lastly, he described the importance of “inoperative care,” in which a caregiver supports a client without following the rules and expectations set by society. He said a good example is a scene in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood where, on a particularly hot day, Mister Rogers invites a black police officer to cool his feet in a plastic pool with him. Despite the racial tensions in their lifetime, the two share a simple, routine conversation—like any two human beings, LaMothe said. 

“Inoperative care meant that Mr. Rogers was not operating out of the dominant cultural representations of the day,” LaMothe said. “Both men, in this moment of mutual care, were not operating under the delusions and contending disciplinary apparatuses of white superiority. They were operating under a mutual personal recognition and care.”

‘The Reality of Working With Human Beings’

In response to LaMothe’s lecture, Mary Beth Werdel, Ph.D., director of the pastoral mental health counseling program at Fordham, spoke about how pastoral caregivers can treat clients experiencing trauma related to climate change or natural disasters. 

Climate change can cause negative psychological effects, including a decreased sense of predictability and control that can lead to acute stress and anxiety, said Werdel. She urged the audience to help clients find meaning in their post-traumatic experiences, especially those related to climate change. 

“Stress and trauma remain intrinsically negative,” Werdel said. “But it’s moving through and enduring the stress and trauma that we come to find and feel and see something different about our world, about ourselves, and about others.” 

She also encouraged the audience to explore psychological and spiritual questions with their clients—not as separate issues, but as one.

“The reality of working with human beings is this: When someone is sitting in front of you … they don’t parcel out, this is my psychological question and this is my spiritual question,” she said, to laughter from the audience. “They just come to you whole. And so we, who spend time thinking about the realities of stress and trauma induced by climate change, have to consider both of these questions together.” 

Towards the end of the conference, LaMothe and Werdel held a panel discussion with two faculty members in the pastoral mental health counseling department: Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., and Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D. 

Bingaman thanked LaMothe for encouraging the audience to neither look away from nor discount the impacts of climate change. Cataldo urged the pastoral caregivers in the room to enter every clinical encounter without memory, understanding, or desire—three things that could impede their work. 

‘The Simple Power of Connection’

An audience member, who identified herself as a hospital chaplain who has supported new amputees and young mothers with traumatic brain injuries, shared a personal story. She said she was a quadriplegic who was once told she would live in a nursing home for the rest of her life. But now, she works as a chaplain who provides emotional and spiritual support. She noted the importance of hope and the place where it is born—“the simple power of connection” with others. 

In the last minutes of the conference, another audience member commented on the positive ways that society is combating climate change, from efforts as wide as New York’s recent ban on single-use plastic bags, to the conference committee’s decision to use paper plates during the breakfast buffet. 

“Any last comments on how we can go forward and encourage our children to be positive and hopeful and do concrete actions to help the environment?” the audience member asked the panelists. 

On a projector screen, Werdel had shared her son’s recent elementary school assignment. He and his classmates were asked to write their wishes for the New Year. “My wish for 2020 is … save white rhinos,” he wrote, beneath a hand-drawn sketch of two rhinos smiling under a sunny sky.  

“I cannot save these rhinos, or the thousand other species that will die because the rhinos die,” Werdel told the woman in the audience. “But I can instill a sense of, hopefully, optimism and agency for what he can do, encourage him to speak out loud his sadness and his loss … Caring about other things—people and places and spaces—that are outside of what he normally sees.”

He became drawn to the little church building near his home. Castellano prayed the rosary, sang in the parish choir, and joined the youth ministry. By the time he reached high school, his life began to revolve around three places: home, school, and the church.

Then one day, a thought occurred to him:

“I started loving being in the church,” Castellano said, waving a hand that holds a silver devotional ring—an early gift from a fellow Passionist priest. “Before graduating from high school, I asked myself: ‘What if I consider life in the priesthood?’”

The Path to Priesthood

Today, Castellano is a 41-year-old priest of the Passionists of St. Paul of the Cross Province, an order found in more than 50 countries worldwide.

At age 28, he became ordained as a priest and, later, a vocation director: a person who helps and guides those who are discerning their vocation in the church. Over the next decade, he journeyed across the country, recruiting future priests and shepherding young seminarians to priesthood. But in his travels, he also witnessed things that could hurt the psychology of a potential priest—deep-seated poverty and “broken” families—particularly in Manila.

“Where he works in the Philippines is one of the poorest, most vulnerable communities in urban Manila,” said Faustino “Tito” Cruz, S.M., dean of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, who was born and raised in the capital city.

There are only two places in the world where divorce is illegal: Vatican City and the Philippines. This has led to the development of “second families,” Castellano explained—conglomerate families of informal stepparents, illegitimate children, and, often times, difficult childhoods.

He recalled a young seminarian who grew up in a “second family.” Life in the seminary was difficult for the young man. He disobeyed his superiors and left the seminary at night when he wasn’t allowed to.  

“Families play an important role in vocation formation. If a child witnesses brokenness or infidelity in the family, that affects the child,” Castellano said.

Redefining the Taboo Behind Mental Illness

Castellano found a solution in Fordham’s master’s program in pastoral mental health counseling—what he called a “marriage of spirituality and mental health counseling” that could help him better guide young seminarians.

In the summer of 2017, Castellano moved to the U.S. and started school at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. Over two years, he completed 60 credits’ worth of coursework.

“There’s a warm and generous spirit about him,” said Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., who taught Castellano in the Theology of Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Care class last fall. “He’s able to explore things comprehensively and in depth … He really had a compassionate approach to his work.”

One of Castellano’s most challenging classes was Psychopathology and Diagnosis, a course designed to help students understand mental disorder diagnosis and treatment. He said it reshaped his understanding of mental health treatment, which is widely seen as a cultural taboo in Asia.

“For Filipinos, if we have problems, we just go to the karaoke bar,” he said, letting out a short laugh. “Our country is bombarded with a lot of manmade and natural calamities. If we have floods in the Philippines, like up to this,” he said, standing up and gesturing below his chin, “we would just enjoy swimming.”

Treatment for mental health issues, he said, is especially stigmatized.

“It’s the last resort of our problems,” Castellano said. “When you go to a counselor or psychotherapist, people will tell you, ‘Are you crazy? Like, can’t you handle your life?’”

What he learned as a young man heavily shaped the way he viewed people with mental health disorders. For years, it was difficult to understand and sympathize with them—including some of the young seminarians in his care. But his time at Fordham changed his attitude.

“A person is always more than their diagnosis,” he said. “The client is a person … There is always this chance for each and every one of us to have that process of healing.”

Paving a New Path in the Philippines

At Fordham, he learned to love Rose Hill’s Gothic buildings and the small, tight-knit community at GRE. He met people who were neither Catholic nor Filipino—men and women from countries as far as Croatia, the Solomon Islands, and Ecuador.

And because Castellano’s student cohort was so small—less than 10 people—he was able to bond with each of them. He recalled the day they walked to Arthur Avenue for some chit-chat and a couple of beers. He also remembered when he connected with Kate Hoover, a Buddhist classmate, who taught him a different way of life.

“I’m amazed at how we tolerate, and how we’ve become so respectful of each other’s faiths,” Castellano said. “And how we decide to love our own faith and at the same time, be open to knowing God in different perspectives.”

In a few months, he will return home to the Philippines. Castellano plans on using his newfound skills to help him better serve his community, the church, and God. He sees himself counseling young men wrestling with emotional turmoil and the priesthood, and even helping some seminarians realize that they aren’t destined for the priesthood after all. In the future, he might obtain his doctorate in ministry.

But for now, he hopes his GRE training will especially help the young students under his wing.

“That would be a great fulfillment for me,” Castellano said. “To see a seminarian who’s undergone counseling and was able to get over, or at least manage, his issues and become a successful priest.”