Living, feeling, disseminating and moving forward in Hospitality is certainly the choice I made for my own personal and professional self-fulfilment.

I discovered the legacy of St John of God 13 years ago in one of the Order’s hospitals in Portugal where I was working as a nurse, the profession of which St John of God is the patron saint. Today I can say that the sense of identifying with the values I experience every day of my life has left its mark on me from the time I embarked on my profession, and have enriched me as a human being.

The ability to reach out through small actions to people who are suffering can make all the difference to their treatment and care. By devoting my days to living and practising the Hospitaller culture to the full I am able to feel, every day of my life, the duty of a mission accomplished.

The mission which Saint John of God bequeathed to us is certainly of inestimable value to our society, and handing it on to others is perhaps the vocation we embrace as Members of the St John of God Family.

For me, the vocation of practising hospitality means being ready to perform a mission, backed up by attitudes and conduct which reveal attachment and dedication to, and respect for and a spiritual attitude towards others.

Hospitality is therefore a vocation to which I try, every day, to make a substantial and meaningful response, in a constant effort to promote the pathway and the teachings of St John of God.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to live Hospitality every day and I trust that this vocation will continue to generate in me, and in those around me the energy that strengthens every action, inspired by Saint John of God.