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Notre Dame grabs lead in Palliative Care training
Western Australia’s award-winning Catholic newspaper since 1874 - Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Perth, Western Australia $2
The end of an era Death of Dom Paulino OSB, last of New Norcia’s Spanish Benedictines, closes a chapter in this state’s Catholic life that began more than 150 years ago.
Undergrad UNDA Nursing students will now be able to study Palliative Care as a Major subject in their Degree courses
UNDA Dean of Nursing Prof Selma Alliex. A Major offered by the School will address an essential area, the Dean told The Record. PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH
BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter THE University of Notre Dame Australia’s School of Nursing in Fremantle has become the first university in WA to introduce a Palliative Care Major at undergraduate level. While Curtin University has a weekly two hour palliative care lecture as part of its Nursing and Midwifery course and Edith Cowan University has post-graduate qualifications in palliative care at Masters and Graduate Diploma levels, UNDA is the first WA university to offer a full undergraduate course in palliative care. Murdoch University has no palliative care course or units. The move is significant for the training of future WA health professionals in nursing. UNDA’s course is the brainchild of St John of God Health Care’s Murdoch Hospice, which wanted to increase knowledge and awareness of palliative care in the community. UNDA also recently appointed Prof Jane Phillips as its chair of Palliative Care at its Sydney campus. UNDA Fremantle’s Dean of Nursing, Prof Selma Alliex, said that palliative care is often misunderstood by students, and that “some see it as euthanasia with another name”. “It is important to distinguish Please turn to Page 7
Dom Paulino OSB, the last of the Spanish-born monks at New Norcia, who passed away on 18 January. He was also the longest serving monk ever in PHOTO: COURTESY NEW NORCIA MONASTERY the history of New Norcia.
BY PETER ROSENGREN Editor
A
chapter in the life of the Catholic Church in Western Australia came to an end on 18 January when Dom Paulino Gutierrez, the last of New Norcia’s Spanish-born monks, died. When he passed away at the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home in Glendalough, Dom Paulino Gutierrez was almost a century old, having reached the venerable age of 99 years. The Little Sisters had cared for Dom Paulino for the last 12 months of his life and were with him praying beside his bed when he entered eternal life. Described as the very model of monastic humility by his Abbott, John Herbert OSB,
in his homily at the Requiem Mass for the repose of Dom Paulino’s soul, the last quarter of his life had been spent producing olive oil from the monastery’s ancient groves. It was therefore a touching, even elegiac, moment when those gathered around his grave in the monastery’s cemetery cast not the traditional handfuls of dirt but olive twigs down on to the coffin, leaving Dom Paulino’s mortal remains covered in a soft carpet of gentle green. The funeral on 22 January at the monastery was attended by an estimated 200 friends, monastics, monastery supporters and church officials as well as Mr Angel Quintella, the Spanish Consul representing Spain’s Ambassador to Australia. Also present were clergy from the Archdiocese of Perth including Auxiliary
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Bishop Donald Sproxton and Bishop Justin Bianchini of Geraldton. “He was a man of simplicity and a perfect model of monastic humility,” Abbott Herbert told The Record. In his homily, Abbott Herbert turned to the Seventh chapter on humility in The Rule of St Benedict, the rule written by the great founder of most forms of monastic life over the last 1,500 years or so and which governs Benedictine life and monasteries throughout the world today, to illustrate how Dom Paulino had faithfully served his God and his brothers. Dom Paulino was born in Villaespasa, near Burgos in Spain, and entered the Please turn to Page 2 Homily for Dom Paulino’s Mass of Christian Burial - Pages 2-3
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