Religious Liberty Once Again Under Attack by the Cultural Elites By Salena Zito for American Greatness
Hostility toward faith-based hospitals rarely comes from local residents or communities. It is a new development crafted out of a new age of politics—and the Biden Administration is making it worse.
PITTSBURGH—L. Hafer of the Pittsburgh Daily Post paid a visit way back on June 9, 1847, to Mercy Hospital, the Catholic hospital begun by the Sisters of Mercy, a religious congregation founded in Ireland. The hospital had just opened its doors four months earlier in a former concert hall smack in the middle of the city on the cusp of transitioning from a frontier outpost to a major industrial hub.
“The Mother Superior very politely conducted us through the new institution, the cleanliness, neatness are everywhere seen,” Hafer wrote. “There are two rows of beds where the sick are brought and have every attention and kindness extended to them. . . . It is an institution intended for the accommodation of men and women of every race, creed and nationality.”
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One year later, Mercy established the region’s first teaching hospital with resident physicians in training. Now, though, this hospital, along with many others across the country, is at risk because of a proposal by the Biden Administration—as we’ll soon discuss.
But back to the Sisters: Their Pittsburgh hospital, which now sits on a bluff on the edge of the central business district, has served the city through the Civil War, two world wars and several deadly pandemics. It remains Pittsburgh’s only Catholic hospital with specialized services, including neurosurgery, a Level I trauma unit and state-of-the-art burn services.
For most of its existence, the neighborhood it occupies, the Bluff, has been a mix of immigrants, minorities and students attending the adjacent Duquesne University, also a Catholic institution.
It is one of those very unique places in the world of medicine where patients receive spiritual healing and benefit from the best cutting-edge technology in the health care world. All the while, it maintains its mission of welcoming everyone since the day it opened, regardless of race, nationality, age, gender or religion.
