(LifeSiteNews) — As the Christian values that underpin the sanctity of life recede from Canada, the number of safe havens for the vulnerable continues to shrink. On October 1, Nova Scotia’s last Catholic hospital — St. Martha’s Regional Hospital — will become Antigonish Memorial Regional Hospital. When the hospital’s “Catholic Mission Assurance Agreement” expires on September 30, so will prohibitions on euthanasia and abortion.
“We decided as sisters, after we took a discernment time, prayed and thought about it, that in order for people to realize it’s not the same hospital we will have to take the name back,” Sister Brendalee Boisvert, congregation lead of the Sisters of St. Martha, told The Chronicle Herald last week. After 120 years, the sisters decided to have their name removed from the hospital. The sisters first joined the healthcare field to combat the spread of tuberculosis.
According to The Chronicle Herald:
The decision to relinquish their role as spiritual supervisors of what was Nova Scotia’s only remaining Catholic hospital came after long consideration of the aging of their members and the changing values of the society around them.
“I don’t believe in MAID, I believe in palliative care and that people need support, and St. Martha’s has a strong palliative care service,” Boisvert said. “That’s our personal and congregational belief; however, I respect that some people are really pushing for that.” It isn’t just Nova Scotia — euthanasia activists are pushing for lethal injections to be offered at hospices and hospitals across the country. Only the sisters’ long-standing commitment to the health of the community kept the assurance agreement in place.
The Sisters of St. Martha became famous inside and outside the province for their prowess, offering free health care, fundraising for the first hospital, and “credited with stopping a typhoid outbreak” in 1905. Over the years, the order consistently raised money to expand their operations, train new nursing staff, and founded and taught the still-running School of Nursing at St. Xavier University. Further hospital expansions came in 1926 and 1951, and the sisters opened hospitals elsewhere in the Maritimes and in Alberta.
“In 1989, the current St. Martha’s Regional Hospital was opened on Bay Street, which the sisters administered until 1996,” The Chronicle Herald reported. “With their congregation getting smaller and older, they transferred ownership and administrative responsibility for the hospital to the provincial government. They continued to oversee the hospital through a mission assurance advisory council that was responsible for ethics and spiritual care.”
As the order shrank and the members grew older, the sisters attempted to transfer their role to Catholic Health International. The provincial government of Nova Scotia, however, stated that it would not renew the “mission assurance agreement” (that prohibits abortion and euthanasia) with any group other than the Sisters of St. Martha. Reluctantly, the order felt forced to give up their role at the hospital, which will soon receive a new name — and, in all likelihood, a new mandate.
“The spirit is alive there, there’s so many staff and doctors that have lived these values, what we call the mission; it is in the DNA of the bricks and mortar,” Boisvert told The Chronicle Herald. “There’s a way to live your life with dignity to all.” That is true, but without the values of the sisters shielding the vulnerable who enter the doors of the newly named Antigonish Memorial Regional Hospital, things may change as swiftly as the culture. The hospital has lost more than just a name.
