THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 10, 1996 TAG: 9609100006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 41 lines
Last week, the Daughters of Charity began leaving their little convent on the 4th floor of Norfolk's DePaul Medical Center. Their departure will empty more than just a few modest rooms.
These sisters and their Daughters of Charity forebears, have worked six days a week, often 10 hours a day, visiting Norfolk's sick and tending to their spiritual as well as their medical needs for 141 years.
Staff writer Marie Joyce reported last week that the DePaul Medical Center is being sold to another Catholic hospital chain, affiliated with a different religious order, the Sisters of Bon Secours. Therefore, the Daughters of Charity are being reassigned. How many new sisters will take their places is still unknown.
It is likely to be fewer than the nine who have lived at DePaul. The numbers of nuns nationwide has fallen sharply in recent years - Catholic women are not choosing to become nuns at the same rate they once were. In 1986 there were 113,658 Catholic sisters in the United States. Today their number stands at 89,125 and many of those women are elderly.
The lack of ``vocations'' as they are called, is changing the face of Catholic hospitals and schools which were long dependent on these tireless and inexpensive workers.
The departure of the Daughters of Charity from DePaul sadly marks the end of an era. This religious order has had a presence in Norfolk since the sisters began tending the sick during a devastating yellow-fever epidemic that struck the area in 1855. These nuns have lived and worked in Norfolk ever since - their mission to ease the suffering of the sick.
Norfolk will miss its dedicated little band of nuns.
And, as Marie Joyce wrote, the sisters will miss Norfolk. These transfers test what many nuns say is the most difficult of the vows they make when joining a religious order: obedience.
``Just because it's the will of God doesn't make the pain go away,'' said Sister Jean on the eve of her departure.
Amen. by CNB