How to help children and adolescents grieve the death of a loved one?

Father Mateo Bautista, a priest who is an expert in grief ministry and health ministry, has just launched the book with the San Pablo publishing house in Peru. Children and adolescents in mourningin which he details how to help them when a loved one dies.

“The pastoral care of mourning He wants to bring the good news in the truly painful moments of the death of a loved one. In these deaths of significant beings, but also in dramatic situations: in accidents, also when several members of the family die, children, young people, in homicides, suicides, in tragedies, in misfortunes,” indicates the Camilo priest of Spanish origin. , in an interview with EWTN News.

“It is a pastoral incardinated in the Gospel, in the spirit of consolation of the beatitudes and in the person of Jesus himself” who cried for the daughter of Jairus and for his friend Lazarus and who “had to mourn his own death” says the priest, who is also known for having donated blood more than 160 times.

How to mourn death?

Father Bautista states that mourning should be done at any age and that the pastoral care of mourning is based on three principles: “community, communication and communion. Community: the value of links. Second, communication: dialogue, talking and listening, letting off steam, but also the mourners having a reception. And communion, giving and giving, even giving from suffering.”

The priest comments that in the grief pastoral groups that he has coordinated for several years, people in the parishes help each other a lot because “each grieving person is also a reflection for the others, it is a stimulus.”

The priest also highlights that in these groups “the corporal, emotional, mental, relational, value-based and spiritual dimension is considered, thinking that when a person suffers due to the death of a significant being, the marriage also suffers, the children suffer, the entire community suffers.” the family.”

How to help children and adolescents experience grief?

The priest highlights that in the face of death “children not only suffer, but sometimes they suffer when they see their elders suffer, and they also have to do mourning work. That is to say, there is a wound, we must recognize it, assume it, work on it, heal it and take human and spiritual benefit.”

“Children have to internalize this reality because from a young age they ask about death. They don’t just ask, they play with death: a child asks where we come from and also asks where we are going,” he continues.

The priest also indicates that children can also ask, and naturally, about the death of their parents, “so the children must be informed, they must be answered, they must be given good examples of mourning work and something important that I hold in mind.” the book: Every child cannot be understood without an adult.”

Tutoring in grief

For these reasons, the priest continues, “whenever a child suffers after the death of a loved one, he or she should have tutoring in grief. Because? Because the duel must begin, continue with a good methodology and it must conclude. And a child cannot do this alone.”

“Today it is said that we have also made death a taboo. And we cannot have that attitude of saying ‘the children do not find out, or the children do not suffer’, or leave healing to the passage of time,” warns the priest.

“That is why we need good tutors on the part of adults to accompany children and adolescents who are critical stages,” he points out.

Religious language and a final recommendation

Father Bautista also told EWTN Noticias that it is important to “take care of religious language in the pastoral care of mourning. Also take care of the image of God. Those expressions, for example, that ‘we lost a loved one’. No, people don’t get lost. Or ‘God took them’. No, God does not take, God receives. Always give a positive image of God. In other words, in the pastoral care of mourning, very especially, always say about God the Father, what Jesus would say.”

The priest, who saw his mother die from cancer when he was 11 years old, concludes by commenting: “In my own experience I see the need, especially in the Church, to have grief pastoral care in each parish. And especially with children. And, above all, that we adults prepare to set a good example. And of course, also, prepare ourselves to mourn our own death.”

You can purchase the book online Children and adolescents in mourning in this link in Peru and in the Divine Word publishing house in Bolivia.