How many of us will be left? Felician nuns face loss and pain after Covid outbreaks americamagazine.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from americamagazine.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
‘How many of us will be left?’ Catholic order loses 21 nuns to COVID-19
Updated Apr 11, 2021;
Posted Apr 11, 2021
Sister Rose Nellivila checks the blood pressure of Lorraine Catney, a resident of Villa Angela at St. Anne Home nursing facility in Greensburg, Pa., Thursday, March 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)AP
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By MATT SEDENSKY AP National Writer
GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) The nuns’ daily email update was overtaken by news of infections. Ambulances blared into the driveways of their convents. Prayers for the sick went unanswered, prayers for the dead grew monotonous and, their cloistered world suddenly caving in, some of the sisters’ thoughts were halting.
GREENSBURG, Pa. At the front desk, the kindly nun who greeted visitors is missing, and in the chapel, where stained glass paints the walls with pastels, she no longer waves hello from the last pew on the left. In the convent s living room, Sister Mary Evelyn Labik isn t resting in a tan recliner, and on its porch, she isn t relishing the hummingbirds.
The heart of this little convent is gone, alongside 20 other Felician Sisters around the U.S. And as the world around them ebbs into normalcy, surviving sisters are feeling a wrenching grief over their losses and a nagging need to know what it all means.
National News
Apr 9, 2021
GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) The nuns’ daily email update was overtaken by news of infections. Ambulances blared into the driveways of their convents. Prayers for the sick went unanswered, prayers for the dead grew monotonous and, their cloistered world suddenly caving in, some of the sisters’ thoughts were halting.
“How many of us,” Sister Mary Jeanine Morozowich wondered, “will be left?”
These were women who held the hands of the dying and who raised the unwanted, who pushed chalk to slate to teach science and grammar and, through their own example, faith. And when the worst year was over, the toll on the Felician Sisters was almost too much to bear: 21 of their own, in four U.S. convents, who collectively served 1,413 years, all felled by the virus.
April 9, 2021 Share
The nuns’ daily email update was overtaken by news of infections. Ambulances blared into the driveways of their convents. Prayers for the sick went unanswered, prayers for the dead grew monotonous and, their cloistered world suddenly caving in, some of the sisters’ thoughts were halting.
“How many of us,” Sister Mary Jeanine Morozowich wondered, “will be left?”
These were women who held the hands of the dying and who raised the unwanted, who pushed chalk to slate to teach science and grammar and, through their own example, faith. And when the worst year was over, the toll on the Felician Sisters was almost too much to bear: 21 of their own, in four U.S. convents, who collectively served 1,413 years, all felled by the virus.