FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 16, 2010

The following is a further clarification on the Archdiocese statement responding to the New York Post article concerning Saint Vincent’s Hospital.
 
Toward the end of the tenure of John Cardinal O’Connor as Archbishop of New York, the relationship between the Archdiocese and Saint Vincent’s Hospital of the Sisters of Charity was severed. The Sisters had decided to enter into a partnership with the Diocese of Brooklyn, which was in place when the Hospital was closed.
 
Shortly after his installation as Archbishop of New York, Edward Cardinal Egan spoke with the leadership of the Sisters of Charity to offer advice and counsel about the troubling financial situation of the Hospital. The offer was declined. Accordingly, the Archdiocese of New York has had no involvement whatever in the administration, finances, or staffing of Saint Vincent’s Hospital over the past twelve years, contrary to what has been reported in local newspapers and radio and television outlets.

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 15, 2010

STATEMENT ON NEW YORK POST ARTICLE REGARDING SAINT VINCENT’S HOSPITAL

In the Sunday edition of the New York Post an “exclusive” article on the closing of Saint Vincent’s Hospital contains a glaring error regarding the Archdiocese of New York.

The article reports that hundreds of millions of dollars of the hospital’s approximately $1 billion debt can be attributed to loans “dumped on Saint Vincent’s from other medical entities of the Archdiocese of New York, starting in 2001, after the other institutions merged with the hospital.”

First, this statement implies that Saint Vincent’s Hospital is one of a number of medical entities of the Archdiocese of New York, and this has never been so.  Since its establishment, Saint Vincent’s Hospital remained an institution of the Sisters of Charity, and not the Archdiocese.  Second, while Saint Vincent’s Hospital had been affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York, the Sisters of Charity terminated this affiliation in 1999, opting to affiliate with the Diocese of Brooklyn.  Any medical entity with which Saint Vincent’s Hospital merged or for which it assumed loan obligations beginning in 2001, therefore, do not belong to the Archdiocese of New York.

Once again, no one is more sad about the closing of Saint Vincent’s Hospital or more grateful to the Sisters of Charity for their commitment to Catholic health care than the Archdiocese of New York.
 

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