Saint Marys Hospital

In 1883, a devastating tornado hit Rochester, causing many deaths and injuries. The local physician, Dr. Mayo, enlisted his sons and the Sisters of St. Francis to act as doctors and nurses, and successfully performed surgeries and nursed the sick and injured. Inspired by this promising outcome, Mother Alfred Moes and the Sisters began to raise money for a hospital.

Mother Alfred Moes' vision was not met with much support or enthusiasm; in the 1880s, the general public considered hospitals to be “charity asylums for the sick poor who had nowhere else to go, in the same class with poorhouses, jails, and insane asylums.”¹ Despite the public's skepticism, Mother Alfred Moes and the Sisters of Saint Francis spent the next four years living meagerly, saving all the money that they could. After a couple of years of construction, in 1889, Saint Marys Hospital opened its doors for the first time, welcoming not just Catholics, but “all sick persons regardless of their color, sex, financial status, or professed religion.”²

"Nearly every patient floor or medical area was known by the name of the Sister in charge."-Sister Ellen Whelan

In many ways, the “Sisters gave of themselves to Saint Marys.”³ They spent hours “attending to the psychological and spiritual needs of their patients.”⁴ To them, this work was an embodied practice of their religion; “they considered the care of the sick as their calling from God.”⁵ 

"They considered the care of the sick as their calling from God."-David A. Leonard

However, they were not only there for moral and spiritual support. The Sisters were “expertly trained, technically adept and medically knowledgeable,”⁶ some working as surgical assistants present in life-or-death surgical procedures in the operating room. So omnipresent were the Sisters in Saint Marys Hospital, that by the 1930’s, “nearly every patient floor or medical area was known by the name of the Sister in charge.”⁷