I served onboard the Royal Caribbean Majesty of the Seas. The highlight was Christmas Midnight Mass in the ship theater. The activities director, Mauriziaio, and the musicians were extremely helpful. We had approximately 350 passengers and crew at the Mass---and much smaller numbers for the 8 AM Mass and 10:00 ecumenical service on Christmas Day.  All in all, a very happy experience!

Fr. John Conley, SJ

AOS-USA Cruise Ship Priest  

I completed a Transatlantic Cruise on HAL - The NOORDAM  on 15 November.  It was a very interesting and good cruise.  The number of passengers attending Daily Mass as well as the Sunday & Holy Day Masses was the largest I have ever experienced on a Cruise.  In fact, they had to change the location of the Mass - from a classroom to a double classroom to a Culinary Center and finally to the ship's Theater.  

 Additionally, they asked  me to participate in a commemoration of a Veteran's Day Program.  It was also during this time that the Typhoon hit the Philippines.  Many of the crew are Filipinos - hence, there was a great deal of counseling and comforting going on.   

HAL did have a short program for the Filipinos that was open to the crew and ultimately to the passengers.  The Captain spoke and I offered a prayer.  I also let the crew know that their families and friends would be remembered in the Crew Mass that Sunday evening.  They were very appreciative and I think it helped alleviate some worry and concern. 

Fr. John B. Boyle

AOS-USA Cruise Ship Priest  

And Fr. William F. Kornacker decided to let his camera do the talking, while serving onboard the Seabourn Spirit.

Fr. Bill Kornacker sets up for Midnight Mass onboard Seabourn Spirit.

AOS-USA Cruise Ship Priests were serving onboard both of these ships which found themselves docked side by side on Christmas Day.

And the sweetest photo of all....The Nativity Scene at the Cathedral in St. Lucia.

We hope these notes and photos help spotlight the universality of our church and how much our member priests are doing for so many! 

Annointing Service onboard  the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas with AOS-USA Cruise Ship Priest Fr. James Shaughnessy.

                      As a Jesuit, it's in our blood and in our hearts and souls to move around, but it's taken me a while to discover my priesthood and my ministry in a different light, on the water. I just returned from my 5th or 6th transatlantic crossing and I'm finally feeling like I know what I'm doing. It finally clicked that these three pastoral venues can inform each other and blend together, for me. I'm no expert, but I've learned a lot from each of these settings about fear and courage and acceptance and healing. All three are highly charged unnatural ways for humans to live.  Being a Jesuit for over 40 years has been one of the more counter cultural ways of living, than many other ways I could have chosen. I am fascinated by other people who find themselves in other, equally unusual  living circumstances.  I've been able to find new life and new faith in living and struggling with the realities of community life and Roman Catholic Church ministry for myself, and I can see it happening for the persons I have come to know in hospitals, and prisons and ships also.  

                     We Americans embrace our freedoms as sacred and we don't do well with giving up our autonomy and independence. People who are ill and hospitalized are terrified of losing their ability to choose, and often mistakenly demand,more and more aggressive treatments that are often painful, futile and expensive.  Guys In  prison know more about what freedom means and what losing control and choice means than we do, but often in ways that remind me of the seriously ill and their families. Both groups come to know and experience in ways they never imagined what having faith in a God who loves them, and companionship with Jesus who will never abandon them, can mean. It's not uncommon for religious faith to finally emerge as vital and personal in ways unimaginable before illness or crisis become part of living and breathing everyday, even for someone who never thought of themselves as religious, before. As a follower of St. Ignatius we , in fact, do see God working everywhere and in everyone.

                    People who find themselves in hospitals and prisons and ocean liners have something in common that most of the rest of us complain about. I am reflecting and writing this just after Christmas and part of the American way of celebrating has become a frenzy of parties and shopping. I like both this a  lot, but we all complain about not having the time. We say we want to be more reflective, more prayerful, and more grateful. People in hospitals and prisons and now the ones I meet on ships do not have the same complaint.  There is more than enough time to wait for the illness to heal, the death to come, the sentence to finish and the port to come to sight.  Time means something else and seems bountiful, and both wonderful and burdensome when we are in places where we no longer make the choices and decisions.

                    For years I would often think that taking a cruise with not so many stops felt like a retreat experience.   As a Jesuit who has worked in hospitals and now jails for most of my life, I had very few opportunities of preaching every day to the same people. Though I have often helped out at retreats over the years, I always was part of a team and shared responsibility for liturgy, preaching and presentations. I had a Jesuit grad from the south say to me after coming to daily mass for two weeks....."Father, I  feel like I've been on a retreat!"    I grinned and said "you could pay me no greater complement, and I guess we have been.".  Another fellow who was the chief legal counsel for an archdiocese  said, " I've never been on a cruise like this before, and I've been on a lot of them."  When I asked him to explain he said that it was because of me.    He said, " Every day you were talking about and asking us to pray for the people who were serving us and their dignity and the sacrifices they made to leave home. I really hadn't given them much thought before. " As many cruise lines started cutting back on when they would place priests, it became more likely I would only be allowed on longer voyages with fewer stops, more sea days and much deeper waters.   

               I decided to offer a retreat on a trans Atlantic three years ago. A fortunate and unplanned coincidence was that the voyage ended in New Orleans. Apparently everyone in New Orleans is Catholic and they all love going to mass because I was honestly overwhelmed with the amount of people who showed up for Eucharist each morning. And the people who come to mass everyday on a ship, on vacation are either "unusual", to be nice....and there are always "those", and then the people who have adult, mature, reasoned faith and who are really running the local churches they attend and manage. When I offered the idea of a retreat on the sea days, based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, many already knew what I was talking about - lots of Jesuit grads, and were intrigued.  I made it clear that we would have Eucharist, then go off to breakfast on our own, then meet back for "points" at 10, find at least an hour in a quiet place to pray and then come back for a communal sharing of what happened at 3.  Each day I take a different meditation from " Praying with St. Ignatius" by ............About two thirds of those who start finish and there are always more retreatants than  books to go around.....10 to 15 each time.

                      The prayer is real and the sharing can be intense, after the group finds it's trust. I've had Church lay ministers decide to not always have to say yes, a professional woman ending a sabbatical, people entering retirement looking back, many a widow and widower turn a little more to gratitude from grief. A woman who was a school principal said, "I've never talked about my faith and God in such personal terms, I'm Irish, not like you Americans. This is hard." It wasn't after the fourth day.

                I've also started to suggest that the faces of our stateroom attendants and our meal servers look as diverse and colorful as the faces of those who work in skilled nursing facilities and who might offer us hospice care, eventually. I suggest that though we are all afraid of giving up our independence and moving to assisted living, our lives on the ship are exactly what assisted living and accepting care are like.  It's not so bad. We really don't have to be so afraid of our futures and the need for help that sooner or later we will come to accept. I encourage my faithful companions by saying that you all have made good choices in the past that have given you the faith and courage to take long and adventurous trips that make this last phase of our lives more exciting than we expected. There is no reason to fear the future as long as we make prudent, careful and thoughtful choices about the care we want in hospitals and care facilities when we need it.  Lots of time to reflect and pray out there.

                 Finally, there is the crew. Last but not least. They are men and women who serve from scores of different countries and they leave behind their wives and husbands and children and parents. Almost all have a dream of a better life and they have the courage and faith to live and work toward that dream. They inspire me with the dignity of their service and their kind patience toward guests who are older, fragile, sometimes grieving and often living with chronic pain or illness. They have a highly developed work ethic and a keen sensitivity toward both the pleasant and the difficult guests. When I look at their faces at Masses, scheduled late at night, I see tired faces of the poor from around the world who have courage and freedom and faith that humbles me. The power of the Eucharist comes alive once again, just as it does in the Hospital and the Prison. It will always be our best way to be grateful and hopeful , no matter what happens or no matter where we find ourselves.

Catholic Maritime News - Winter 2013 

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin N.116 June 2013/III

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin N.115 June 2013/II 

Catholic Maritime News Spring 2013 No. 72  

 Apostolatus Maris Bulletin N.114 March 2013/I 

Catholic Maritime News Winter 2012 No. 71 

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin N.113 2012/III   

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin N.112 2012/II  

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin April 2012 (111)  

2012 Easter Message from the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants 

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin December 2011 (110) 

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin Sept 2011 (109) 

Apostolatus Maris Bulletin July 2011 (108)   

Audio Report: No Pirates of the Caribbean - Vatican Radio (December 7, 2011) 

Piracy video from Lloyd's List