Skip to main content

New story in Health from Time: 13 Religious Sisters Have Died From COVID-19 at a Single Convent in Michigan



Thirteen religious sisters at a Michigan convent have died from the coronavirus, with twelve sisters passing in the span of a month.

The women, aged 69 to 99, were all members of a Felician Sisters convent in Livonia, Mi.

On Good Friday, the virus took the life of Sister Mary Luiza Wawrzyniak, 99. By the end of the month, eleven other sisters had passed; seventeen more were infected but recovered, according to Sr. Noel Marie Gabriel, the director of clinical health services for Our Lady of Hope Province. A thirteenth sister, despite an initial recovery, passed away in June.

“The sisters in Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mother convent in Livonia — as well as all of us in the province — are still very much dealing with the loss of so many sisters,” says Suzanne Wilcox English, Executive Director of Mission Advancement for the Felician Sisters of North America.

The sisters, all of whom were long-time members of the convent, lived, prayed and worked together. Prior to their retirements, the women had worked as school teachers, college professors and principals; librarians, nurses and organists.

Sister Mary Luiza Wawrzyniak had “served as the ‘sunshine person’ for the local minister, sending feast day and birthday cards to the Sisters in the infirmary,” an obituary reads; Sister Victoria Marie Indyk, 69, led nursing students regular trips to the Felician Sisters’ mission in Haiti. Sister Rose Mary Wolak, 86, spent eight years working as a secretary in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State; Sister Thomas Marie Wadowski, 73, once led a second-grade class to win a national prize in a Campbell’s Soup commercial competition.

The death of the 13 nuns could be the most serious loss of life experienced by a group of religious women in the United States since the 1918 influenza pandemic, according to Global Sisters Report, a non-profit Catholic news outlet. Globally, at least 61 Felician sisters have died. But other religious orders have also been struck by the virus, with six sisters dying of COVID-19 at the Our Lady of the Angels Convent in Wisconsin in April.

The convent closed its doors to visitors in March and placed strict restrictions on group activities. But the virus still reached the convent, and spread quickly.

For many sisters, who normally pray alongside those who are dying, having to socially distance during a time of grief was difficult. “Normally, we will share stories about the sister we have lost during the vigil, the night before the funeral,” says English. “But we have been unable to do so.”

“Their collective impact on the community has been, and continues to be, very deep,” says English.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: Here’s How Quickly Coronavirus Is Spreading in Your State

The novel coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis, a national emergency and a local nightmare. But while a great deal of the focus in the U.S. has been on the federal government’s response, widely criticized as slow and halting , the picture on the ground remains very different in different parts of the country. A TIME analysis of the per capita spread of the epidemic in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. found considerable range in the rate of contagion, and, in some parts of the country, a significant disparity compared to the national figure. The U.S., unlike nations such as South Korea and now Italy , has yet to show signs of bringing the runaway spread of the virus under control. However, while no single state is yet showing strong signs of bending the curve , some are faring much worse than others. The following graphic plots the rise in the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in each state, plotted by the day that each state reported its first case.
Read more

New story in Health from Time: We Need to Take Care of the Growing Number of Long-term COVID-19 Patients

On July 7, 2020, the Boston Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez tested positive for the new coronavirus. He was scheduled to start Opening Day for the Sox, but the virus had other plans— damaging Rodriguez’s heart and causing a condition called myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). Now the previously fit 27-year old ace left-hander must sit out the 2020 season to recover. Rodriguez is not alone in having heart damage from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In a new study done in Germany, researchers studied the hearts of 100 patients who had recently recovered from COVID-19. The findings were alarming: 78 patients had heart abnormalities, as shown by a special kind of imaging test that shows the heart’s structure (a cardiac MRI), and 60 had myocarditis. These patients were mostly young and previously healthy . Several had just returned from ski trips. While other studies have shown a lower rate of heart problems—for example, a study of 416 patients hosp
Read more

New story in Health from Time: What We Don’t Know About COVID-19 Can Hurt Us

Countries around the world have introduced stringent control measures to stop COVID-19 outbreaks growing, but now many find themselves facing the same situation again. From Melbourne to Miami, the relaxation of measures had led to increasing flare-ups, which in some places has already meant reclosing schools, businesses or travel routes. Within the U.S. and among different countries , places with wildly varying public-health policies have experienced wildly diverse outcomes. Most ominously, infections are rising rapidly in many places where they once were falling. So how do countries avoid an indefinite, unsustainable, cycle of opening and closing society? What is needed to prevent a future of strict social distancing and closed borders? To escape this limbo, we need to know more about each step in the chain of infection: why some people are more susceptible or have more symptoms, how our interactions and surroundings influence risk, and how we can curb the impact of the re
Read more