A Maryknoll priest's healing ministry helps fellow clergy and other church people to overcome their addictions

In their efforts to serve some of the world's most hard-pressed people, Maryknoll missioners will always work through the local Catholic church of the country to which they've been sent.

Sometimes that means ministering to the ministers.

Maryknoll Father Edward Shellito brings a distinct specialty to his mission in Namibia. Shellito helps church members, including clergy, to recover from addictions - whether these are to alcohol, drugs, gambling or sexual compulsion.

"Somehow through the grace of God I became recognized as someone who could offer a special service that was very much needed," the missioner from Erie, Pa., says, "and because of Maryknoll I was available to fulfill the need."

After 15 years in mission in the Philippines, Shellito pursued a master's degree in pastoral counseling from Loyola College in Maryland. In 2008 he said goodbye to his beloved community in the Filipino island of Mindanao to join the Maryknoll team in Namibia, southern Africa. His relaxed manner and often impish humor mask a fierce commitment to combating some of society's most intractable and baffling conditions.

"The need is great" in Namibia as it was in the Philippines, where "the work has been passed on to others," says Shellito, 58. In the southern African nation he has encountered an entrenched gambling industry, with gambling dens abounding in the cities, along with what he calls "a very strong culture of heavy drinking."

Consequently, he notes, a social climate exists in which "no one's going to recognize that maybe you're drinking inappropriately — until you crash your car, until you start a house on fire."

For Shellito, helping someone in the grip of an addiction usually involves using cognitive-behavioral therapy, which almost always begins in encouraging the individual to "name" the problem accurately and honestly.

Too often, he says, the addict's or alcoholic's community indulges the person with the problem, especially if he or she is in a position of trust and a role of leadership, as with a priest.

Shellito recalls his presentation on "addictions and various professional failures of the clergy" to the Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. He grabbed the bishops' attention by saying, "Bishops, you do not have problem priests; you have fellow priests with problems." He described his work then, and still does in Namibia, as treating "persons or clergy with severe behavioral and emotional difficulties, not as problems to be solved, but as opportunities to allow the Lord's good grace through his church to assist the troubled toward a more Spirit-filled life."

Fundamental to Shellito's mission is helping the Church as a whole, and sometimes even the culture of an entire society "to recognize the troubled behaviors as a disease."

Shellito's approach seems to be paying off in Namibia. In one case at a Roman Catholic hospital, the missioner helped a young worker (not a clergyman or a religious) who was having problems on the job because of a serious gambling obsession. Once the "naming" process was accomplished - that is, the man recognized the problem - the client and counselor moved on to focus on the man's successes and strengths, and worked out concrete steps for him to take in the future. Within a few months hospital administrators were delighted that the employee appeared to have turned his life around, and had become a strong asset to the hospital.

Often it can be more difficult with priests, admits Shellito (pictured right, at the Windhoek Roman Catholic Hospital). "Very few clergy can easily recognize their own failings or be aware of the extreme danger that they sometimes put themselves in. They need others to help them open up."

This is where faith comes in. Along with psychological techniques, Shellito takes a decidedly spiritual approach with clergy: "The person can be helped to start approaching the Lord saying, 'Hey, I want to get my act together. I want to feel that joy, that peace that God promises. Right now for some reason I'm not getting it from God. I'm getting it from the bottle. I'm getting it from the gambling den.' "

Shellito is determined to offer recovery and renewal that is church-based, and he finds ritual to be especially helpful. He has insisted, for instance, when someone comes for therapy that a superior or a close friend "presents" the individual to his treatment center in a "turning-over" ceremony. At the end of therapy, a similar "giving-back" ceremony occurs, emphasizing that the individual's journey and ministry are not over, but only interrupted. Importantly, superiors and congregations can give "a healthy welcome" to their returning brother.

"I was always taught that the sacraments were given to the Church, rather than to individuals," Shellito says. "Now, individuals avail themselves of that, and the grace is available to the individual, but for the sake of the community and building the Kingdom of God. So not only is community important in the recovery process, in recognizing the issues, but allowing the community to rejoice in that recovery has also to be a goal." ­

David Tereshchuk is Executive Producer of Maryknoll's Interactive Media unit and has worked extensively in Africa as a journalist and documentary-maker for international news and broadcasting organizations.

For an audio interview with Father Shellito, go to Maryknoll's radio program Voices of Our World at www.voicesofourworld.org/download.cfm  and click on Program 1014

To see a VIDEO featuring Father Shellito in Namibia, click HERE or on the photos in this article.

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