Why are SNJMs also involved in health care?

To help: Women and children in difficulty, migrant and refugee people, people in search of meaning…

The full development of individuals is at the heart of the educational mission of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (SNJM). For SNJM Sisters, it is unthinkable to provide an academic education if people are not healthy.

This approach was revealed from the very beginning of the Congregation. Mother Marie-Rose herself experienced this apostolate during her work in the parish of Beloeil where she visited the sick. In a chapter dedicated to the Sister Nurse in the Coutumier, a small volume that records the different ways of acting in the religious community, she indicates among other things: “Those of the Sisters who will carry out this work will have to make themselves capable of giving corporal and spiritual care to the sick. Moreover, all the Sisters must be good teachers of health for the others.

It is in this spirit that several Sisters have responded to these needs by committing themselves to medicine, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy. This complementary dimension to the educational mission of the SNJMs in North America, however, has become equally important in other countries, including Lesotho and Latin America.

Before sending the first missionaries to Lesotho (Basutoland at the time) in 1931, Mother Superior Marie-Odilon inquired about the skills and abilities required to carry out their mission in that country. In addition to learning the language and culture, preparing meals without pre-processed food, working without electricity, she required her missionaries to take practical courses from the motherhouse nurses. Lessons in dentistry were added. Sr. Maurice-Marie even learned from Dr. Reeves of Notre Dame Hospital in Montreal how to give local anesthesia and how to select and place the forceps to extract a tooth.

Facilitating access to quality health care

In Lesotho, education and health care are the two main ministries of the SNJMs, to which have been added over time community actions, including the creation of wells and a bakery. The Basuto sisters were also trained in nursing, notably at the Roma School of Nursing, founded by Sr. Rose Leona. Since then, the SNJMs have founded a dozen clinics and dispensaries to facilitate access to quality health care for primarily rural populations.

SNJMs’ involvement in Latin America since the 1960s has also included health care. We can highlight the work as a nurse for 13 years in Haiti of Sr. Rose Desrochers and several SNJM sisters who provided health care in Brazil and Peru.

In the United States, access to health care can be very uneven. Sr. Anne Brooks’ story is not an ordinary one. From the moment she arrived in Tutwiler, Mississippi, she has had a tremendous impact on the underprivileged population there. To the people of Tutwiler, this osteopathic physician “is a savior” in part because she is the only “doctor” in town and because she works up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, even at age 74. In 2012, she was named “Physician of the Year” by the American Osteopathic Foundation.

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