Nurse on way to sainthood

By Tanya Connor  | The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER –     Healthcare workers at the 15th Annual Divine Mercy Medicine, Bioethics and Spirituality Conference learned a bit about a woman who shares their profession and is now on her way to sainthood. She also shares in the spirituality many of them embrace.
The conference, held at the College of the Holy Cross on May 7 and 8, is sponsored by Healthcare Professionals for Divine Mercy, an official apostolate of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, who run the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge.
Keynote speaker Sister Gosia Brykczynska, a consecrated virgin from London, spoke about Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska, the first lay registered nurse to be beatified.
A retired pediatric nurse and professor, Sister Gosia authored “Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska, RN: A Nurse of Mercy,” released last month on Divine Mercy Sunday by Marian Press.
Sister Gosia described Blessed Hanna’s view of  nursing with a quote from her: “My work is not only my profession but my vocation; I have come not to be served, but to serve.”
Hanna was a pioneer of nursing in her native Poland, Sister Gosia said.
“She had too many ‘friends in high places’” for the Communists to do too much to her, she said. But in the 1950s they basically forced her into retirement, she started parish nursing full time, and her daily Mass attendance became more well known.
Establishing parish nursing, which included retreats for the homebound, Hanna worked with Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II. While a prelate in Krakow he established a Day of Prayer for the Sick on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, then extended it to the world after becoming pope.
“He was inspired by Hanna to do this,” Sister Gosia said.
Sister Gosia told conference attendees. “Her key … to heaven, her sanctity, was her nursing. … She loved her work and she loved her patients.” She saw nurses as Christ going to the sick, and the sick as Christ.     
Sister Gosia told this story of Zofia Szlendak, one of Hanna’s pupils and nurses. When Zofia left the Church and married a divorced man, friends shunned her. Trying to pray at Hanna’s grave, Zofia was troubled that she’d forgotten how to pray the Our Father.
Zofia had a brain aneurism, and a nurse who’d maintained contact with her started a novena for her among nurses who’d worked with Hanna. Six weeks later Zofia regained consciousness and her brain scans were perfect. Zofia suggested Hanna be considered for beatification even before she herself returned to the Church, and her healing became the required miracle.
“If everybody had left Zofia, we wouldn’t have had a miracle,” Sister Gosia said, in reference to how she was treated.

Lejeune vs. Sanger

Another conference speaker, Dr. Bryan Thatcher, contrasted a pro-life doctor with a promoter of eugenics. He is international director of Doctors for Divine Mercy and founder of the Eucharistic Apostles of Divine Mercy,
He told how his daughter was distraught when medical professionals discovered that her newborn, Louie, had a congenital bowel problem.
“Let’s pray,” Dr. Thatcher said he urged her. She felt she couldn’t. He encouraged her to “stay in the day,” not worry about potential future problems. But, he realized, with issues like this “people have to work through it at their own speed.”
Louie, now a month old, needs more surgeries, but is stable, he said. He showed a photo of Louie’s baseball-loving father telling him about the sport.
“I thought, ‘That is the beauty of life,’” Dr. Thatcher said. If he’d been diagnosed before birth “there would have been many people who would have aborted little Louie.”
He told of an article which claimed Down syndrome was cured in a European country because all the babies with it had been aborted.
Dr. Jerome Lejeune discovered that Down syndrome was linked to a chromosome abnormality, and later discovered other gene-related abnormalities, which led to prenatal diagnosis and abortions, Dr. Thatcher said. A devout Catholic, Dr. Lejeune spoke out against abortion and was ostracized by the medical establishment because of it.
But Pope John Paul II made him the first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome and he’s been named a Servant of God, a step toward canonization.
Dr. Thatcher contrasted Dr. Lejeune with Margaret Sanger, considered the founder of Planned Parenthood, a leading abortion provider.
He cited the following quotes from her:
“I believe that there should be no more babies.”
“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population ...”
 “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan ... A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.”
“I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world, that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically ... Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born.”
Dr. Thatcher urged listeners to fall in love with their vocation – motherhood, married life etc. – use it to spread God’s mercy and never fear to stand up for their beliefs. He said people need to pray and live a sacramental life and trust in God’s mercy in all situations.
Previous Divine Mercy healthcare conference talks and other talks are posted on www.divinemercymatters.org, according to Marie Romagnano, founder of Healthcare Professionals. She is a catastrophic injury nurse for Med-Link Inc. and a member of St. Roch Parish in Oxford.