An edited excerpt from a presentation given by Sr Mary Noel Menezes, RSM, at the press conference held by St Joseph Mercy Hospital on Thursday.
St Joseph Mercy Hospital has, to date, a history of 65 years’ service to the people of Guyana.
In 1943 a group of Catholic laymen comprising the Sword Of The Spirit movement headed by Bishop George Weld, SJ cherished the dream of a Catholic hospital. That dream was the fruit of the desire of a brilliant Italian surgeon, Dr Caesare Romiti, for religious sisters to run a hospital.
The dream became a reality when the Sisters of Mercy of the Scranton Province, USA, agreed to accept the management of the proposed hospital. The Catholic Hospital Committee formed in 1944 purchased Dr Romiti’s private nursing home, Colonna House cum equipment, for $48,000. Sr Margaret Mulligan, who had worked for four years at Mahaica Hospital, was appointed first administrator of the hospital, which was placed under the patronage of St Joseph – hence St Joseph Mercy Hospital.
Sr Margaret was joined by Srs Georgia and Kateri. While the hospital was under construction a Nursing School was officially opened on March 19, 1945, with two classes of 20 students each being taught by Sr Generosa, who would in the years ahead become one of the administrators. By 1946 the Nursing School was recognized by the government.
On the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1945, St Joseph Mercy Hospital was blessed and on September 1, 1945, it officially opened its doors. Its first case was a maternity one, and it was truly significant that the surname of the first baby born was Carpenter – a fitting recognition of the patron, St Joseph, a carpenter. As the months went by hearts and purses were opened and the $240,000 needed to complete the renovations was soon raised. The impact of a Catholic Hospital was felt throughout the country. A statement of a Methodist Minister aptly summed up the views of people:
“No one is going to quarrel because it is a Catholic Hospital… Suffering does not question the source of its relief. It thanks God and those who brought relief. “The Catholic Hospital was just a noble thought, nobly conceived and nobly propagated.”
A minister of the government rightly pointed out that the Catholic hospital existed for the community and should, therefore, receive the support of the community. And so it did. Indeed, so much financial and moral support did it receive that in four years a new three-storeyed concrete building, the Annexe, was completed, adding 75 beds between private rooms and wards and other facilities to the existing hospital. The financial support was, above all, boosted by the establishment of the Ladies Auxiliary in May 1949, which organized appeals and used a variety of interesting ways and means to raise the requisite funds. They were in the vanguard of the fund-raising committee to help raise approximately $23 million for the new extension completed in 1994, the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy in then British Guiana. The Ladies are still a source of tremendous help to the hospital.
Mercy Hospital, from the outset, has been blessed by a nucleus of outstanding and dedicated doctors, led by the two Romiti brothers, Caesare and Alexandro, Drs Craigen, Coia, Bettencourt-Gomes, Shenolikar, Fredericks, Searwar and Sr Liguori, a Mercy Sister surgeon. Over the years twelve Sisters of Mercy have served as administrators, two of them Guyanese – Srs Admirabilis Browne and Therese Marie Marques. Many other Sisters of Mercy have served in different capacities at the hospital, while lay administrators have also carried out, and still carry on the Spirit of Mercy. The service of the sick and the poor are two of the main objects of the Sisters of Mercy, a religious order founded in Ireland in 1831 by Catherine McAuley. Catherine wrote in her Familiar Instructions To The Sisters:
“By our vocation to the Order of Mercy, and by a most sacred vow at our Holy Profession, we are engaged to comfort and instruct the sick poor of Christ.
This is the principal reason we are called ‘Sisters of Mercy’…”
In 1845, two years after the first Sisters of Mercy went to the United States, the first Mercy Hospital was established in Pittsburgh, and throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth many more mushroomed all over the US.
