"Charity", he said, "is an essential in the work of this kind, and it is an unwritten law in the order that no one,
no matter how poor or afflicted, will be turned away as long as there is a room or a bed vacant."
-- Reverend James A. Griffin
Bishop of Springfield in Illinois
Address to the Congregation
November 12, 1925

The mission activity of the American Province of the Hospital Sisters began in 1925 when five of our Sisters arrived in Tsinan, China. For 50 years, the American Congregation was blessed in establishing health care facilities in the United States. In gratitude for this blessing, the order responded to a request to staff a mission hospital in China. In September, Sisters sailed to China to begin the first International missionary work of the American Province. In 1948, all non-Chinese Sisters were asked to leave China. The American Sisters along with Chinese Novices returned to the United States. The hospital staffed by the Sisters is now in the hands of the Chinese government.

Haiti
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and the city of Jeremie, a mountainous isolated city in the southwest section, has many serious health conditions.

Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, an orthodontist from Connecticut, first visited Haiti in 1982. He extracted teeth in alleyways and schoolrooms in the slums of Port-au-Prince. His visits led him to establish the Haitian Health Foundation. The "Clinic of the People of God" was dedicated on December 8, 1988.
For more information on the HAITIAN HEALTH FOUNDATION please contact:

Marilyn Lowney
Haitian Health Foundation
97 Sherman Street
Norwich, CT 06360

E-Mail Marilyn Lowney
(www.HaitianHealthFoundation.org)

In September of 1989, Sister Maryann Berard and Sister Joan Jordan volunteered to serve at the clinic. A number of our Sisters and other Hospital Sisters from our international community with the assistance of countless others, have served the Haitian Health Foundation. While this is not one of our sponsored ministries, it continues in our long history of responding to need.

Tanzania
A sponsored ministry of our Province
San Damiano Mission
Kemondo, Tanzania

In the summer of 1998 Reverend Father Thomas Tibainuguka from Bukoba Diocese, Tanzania visited Springfield, Illinois, and met several of the Sisters of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis. The Sisters discussed their vision and dreams of missionary work in Africa with him. Father Thomas secured a meeting with the Reverend Bishop Nestor Timanywa of the Bukoba Diocese. In March of 1999, the first delegation of Sisters toured the Bukoba diocese.

When they reached Kemondo they found a worn San Damiano crucifix hanging over the altar of the simple church. It touched them to realize that other Franciscans had served the people of Kemondo. That Spring Sister Anne Carlino and Stefanie Koester, a lay associate from Germany, were commissioned as missionaries to Tanzania. They arrived there on July 28, 1999.