Catholic Hospitals

The enduring legacy of the Sisters of Providence, who founded the original St. Paul’s Hospital in 1894, was front and centre Dec. 6 as Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller blessed the cornerstone for the new St. Paul’s Hospital being built in False Creek Flats.

The parents of a terminally ill woman who was transferred to another facility to be euthanized after St. Paul’s Hospital refused to allow the procedure on its premises are suing the provincial government and Providence Health Care, the Catholic health-care provider that operates St. Paul’s.

More than half a year has now passed since the British Columbia government ordered Vancouver Coastal Health to build a euthanasia facility next to St. Paul’s Hospital, thereby doing an end run around the Catholic hospital’s principled opposition to assisted suicide.