“Carry someone else on your back for at least part of your journey”. My name is Robert Buehringer and I am the head of the Secretariat of the Fatebenefratelli Province of Austria: in other words, my principal brief is to deal with administrative matters. On the wall of my office, however, is a painting that shows Saint John of God carrying an old man on his back out of the royal hospital of Granada which had gone up in flames. For me, this is the essence of Hospitality: “To carry another on one’s back for at least a part of your  journey”. It is more or less the same as what I was taught when I was a Boy Scout. “A good deed every day”.

We all go through phases in our lives when we need to be carried on someone else’s back for at least a part of the way, because we can’t make it on our own. This kind of assistance is not expected to be permanent, but there are situation, difficulties and obstacles that, alone, we are unable to handle and in those moments we need someone else’s shoulders to support us.

Those of us who work with the order in ways other than direct contact with patients contribute to Hospitality in a different way, for example by taking care of documents, safeguarding valuables, interpreting legislative texts, examining contracts, and keeping track of important dates and numbers. But we can also be Hospitality givers simply by listening to someone who had a serious problem and is trying to find a way to deal with it.

The members of an administrative team need to work together and support each other professionally, because often the administrative world is a jungle in which it is impossible to survive without a compass, a flashlight and a safety line. Working together, instead, it is always possible to find the road that leads out of the jungle.

In the painting mentioned above, next to Saint John of God there is another man who in turn is trying to protect our saintly Founder. And this is exactly the way in which I view my own service: to stand at the side of all those − monks, assistants, volunteers etc. − who work in direct contact with the patients, offering them all my help and support.