Catholic healthcare’s long legacy
Sister Mary Jean Ryan, the retired longtime CEO of SSM Health and one of this year’s inductees into the Health Care Hall of Fame (See profile on p. H4), follows in the footsteps of many pioneering religious sisters. Eight other nuns have entered the hall over the years, taking diverse paths and representing many generations. Among them are two saints, Frances Xavier Cabrini and Elizabeth Ann Seton. Mother Cabrini, the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Among the order’s many accomplishments and good works over the decades was the founding of numerous schools, orphanages and hospitals. She passed away in 1917. Mother Seton, the first American-born saint, founded the Sisters of Charity in the U.S., which also has a long legacy of serving the most vulnerable and establishing hospitals, schools, orphanages and nurseries. She died in 1821.
Sister Ignatia Gavin is best known for her close work with Dr. Bob Smith, a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Known as the “Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous,” Sister Gavin was a pioneer in treating alcoholism before it was even recognized as a legitimate medical diagnosis. During a time when most hospitals turned away “drunks,” Sister Ignatia, working with “Dr. Bob” at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, went out of her way to treat them with kindness and respect and help them up sober up. She is credited with helping to develop some tenets of the AA program. She passed away in 1966.
The sisters also weren’t strangers to health system C-suites. Among them, Sister Mary Roch Rocklage was the founding CEO of Mercy Health System based in Chesterfield, Mo., serving from 1986 to 1999. The system continues to thrive although its sponsorship has changed, and Sister Mary Roch is still active in an advisory role.
Sister Irene Kraus in the late 1980s became the founding CEO of the Daughters of Charity National Health System, once among the nation’s largest not-for-profit hospital systems. In 1980, she became the first woman to chair the American Hospital Association. Sister Irene passed away in 1998.
“There has never been a larger healthcare system than when you look at all of Catholic healthcare put together. That is the sisters’ legacy,” said Sister Carol Keehan, longtime CEO of the Catholic Health Association. “And this was at a time when women were not in positions of power, particularly religious women. They didn’t have a lot of political sway and certainly not a lot of business training, in a formal sense of it.”