Father Damien Schill recognized for dedication to COVID-19 patients

Father Damien Schill, chaplain of the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, received the employee of the month award for his dedication to the spiritual needs of COVID-19 patients on June 1. Father Schill is one of 4,700 employees eligible to receive the award and 12 are chosen each year. 

The nomination states: “Father Damien has always been renowned for his responsiveness to calls for last rites 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. During the COVID-19 crisis, this has become even more meaningful, especially to family members that cannot be near the Veteran as often as they would like. In a card from a patient’s family to Father Damien they expressed it this way: ‘Losing our dad to the COVID-19 virus was truly awful. Your visit to him to bring the Sacrament of the Sick and Holy Communion at the risk of your own life stands out as a witness of Jesus in the world. We can’t describe how much it meant to us when we were kept away from him. You have been a great comfort to Dad and his seven children.’ This letter is not unusual as recognition for Father Damien and the whole Chaplain staff he leads. He is a role model to us all of dedication and sacrifice for the care of our Veterans. He provides a critical spiritual component to the well-being of our patients, staff, and families.”

Father Schill says he’s seen hundreds of patients since the virus broke out.

“My experience is pretty much the same as it is with all patients,” Father Schill said. “I don’t have a different mindset. We don the proper PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that we wear when we go in the room. We take all the precautions, but the patients are regular people. Though it’s really hot. The face shield is like an oven on your head.”

Father Schill has served parishes in Edgeley; Nortonville; Holy Spirit, Fargo; Oriska; Buffalo; Fingal; Dazey; and Sanborn before beginning his service to the Military Archdiocese in 1998.

During the stay-at-home orders, when Father Schill wasn’t seeing to the needs of patients at the hospital, he finished the third installment of his cookbook trilogy: Cooking and Eating with Father Damien and Friends. The trilogy has taken him four years to complete.

“Writing these three cookbooks has been a stroll down memory lane for me,” he writes in the introduction, “So many fond memories of dinner parties, Jubilee parties, desserts, Christmas parties, etc. over the years. Just bringing back all these memories has made it special in writing these books.”

His books are available at Hurley’s Religious Goods in Fargo.