Anthony, Joseph J.

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 34 | Number 4 Article 8November 1967The Medical Missionaries of MaryJoseph J. AnthonyFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationAnthony, Joseph J. (1967) "The Medical Missionaries of Mary," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 34 : No. 4 , Article 8.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol34/iss4/8The Medical Missionaries of Mary Sister Joseph Anthony, M.M.M. On April 4, 1937, from her bed in a public hospital in Port Har-court, Nigeria, Marie Helena Martin offered her religious vows to God in the presence of Msgr. Joseph Moynagh, Prefect Apostolic of Cala-bar. Her two companions were on the way to join her from Anua, the small Nigerian village where, two months earlier, all three . had begun to work publicly as Medical Mis-sionaries of Mary. They arrived too late for the brief ceremony. From that day to this the M.M.M. have been trying to keep up to their foundress. They have built their way across mid-Africa, working with lay doctors or Sister Doctors, or no doctors, as circumstances provided. In 1939, little St. Luke's Hospital in Anua was closed because their German doctor was interned at the outbreak of World War II. Three nurse-midwives remained to strug-gle along until war conditions per-mitted Irish doctors to come to their aid in 1943. Together with three dedicated men, and a few more Sisters, they began a series of mis-sions which developed into general hospitals, maternity hospitals and clinics, plague control centers, lep-rosy villages, child w~lfare clinics, . fertility clinics and nursing schools. In 1967, before the secession of Biafra: and subsequent hostilities, there were 25 major mission centers in Africa and one in Formosa. Around these hospitals, flourished nearly 200 outpatient or bush NovEMBER clinics, 18 leprosy villages, and sev-eral nursing schools. Out of thirty years of work a pat-tern has come. Primitive in many ways is the M.M.M. life. Seldom have they gone into Europeanized or urban areas. They prefer to work in interior regions not yet reached by medicine. Life for the M.M.M. has never been push-button, but Til-ley lamp. On most stations, every drop of water must be boiled and fi.l tered, often carefully measured as well. Primitive too, is the life of the people among whom they live. One wonders how the American girl of today faces such a prospect, choos-ing it as her life (in the past I 4 years nearly SO have done so). And the Sister doctor? The product of a medical school, skilled in the use of instruments and equipment of our age, how does she face practice without them? She sometimes uses the flat of a door or a mound of mud bricks for her operating table. Her diagnostic skill is developed rapidly by the customary presence of a plurality of infections, diseases, and debilitating holes in the nutri-tional life of the swarms of men, women and children who stand at her doorstep each morning. The nurse (also midwife more often than not) carries responsibility for the resident clinic, far from a doctor. Almost daily, a primapara is brought to her as a last resort, often in her last agony, when all tribal methods of delivery have but added to their burden of misery. The Sister mid-341 . . . ' I - ' ' wife's wits and skill have no time to dull. How sure her judgment must be to find and send on to hos-pital those of her ante-natal patients who will need a surgeon's help-and to do so in good time. Usually, the Medical Missionaries of Mary begin in small two-Sister clinics which grow little by little: first a maternity ward; then a pediat-rics ward and clinic; finally to a full-scale hospital. This has been the pattern from the beginning. Life in a hurry, in the midst of labors, -that is what was foreseen by the foundress, now famous as Mother Mary Martin, in her three years as a lay missionary in Africa during the early 1920's. She lived with a few Nigerian girls in the "bush" and labored with her hands as teacher, nurse, midwife for all in the area. A V.A.D. nurse (Volun-tary Aid Defence nurse, posted to France and then to Malta during the Gallipoli campaign) in Malta during World War I, she was no stranger to suffering, but still she was appalled by conditions daily met in the bush. During her years there she learned many things: Volunteer service is sporadic, erratic, often quite inadequate; planned re-placements must be available; more than professional dedication is re-quired of pioneers; teaching and medical work do not mix well. Translated into practical terms, medical Religious would be the only answer. But a new kind of religious would be required, who would serve, develop, reach out, be mobile - and move on when others were ready to take over. This was the kind of frontier-medicine that 342 Mother Mary envisioned. -empire builder, nor a bell institutions thilt would cor weigh down, she saw her preparing and educating , for the time when they cou over the work, leaving the free to move on to others i. These are her guidelines: G( people, in to their villag< houses; meet them in o clinics; in addition to all tht cal work, keep in close touc · women and young girls, for , Christians, prepare them il riage training centers to b wives and mothers, thus the spiritual as well as r health of the home and its c! )t an ~r in 1e or , isters ·icans take isters · ~1eed. o the and -door nedi-with good mar-good <Hing ·:sical dren. Selfless, and born of a race n. ed for its loyalty to the Church, 1 other Mary brought sound practice ty to the task of forming a new ngre-gation. Three "words" have uided her: The Lord's first direc ,·e to His disciples, "go into every illage and heal the sick therein"; th spirit of St. Benedict, Ora et labm : and St. Paul's "Rooted and Foun d in Love." Choosing the last f( c her motto, she wrote constitutit 1s so perfectly consonant with the mind of the Church that Rome apJ,roved them without change. Rome 1 ndeed had called for new societies ( ,f Re-ligious women for the missi s, to care for the medical needs p<l r ticu-larly of women and children. Mother undertook to provide these w men, whose special talents were to be brought to the highest profe sional proficiency in the Medical Mission-aries of Mary. Wisely she kept restrictions to a bare minimum. Looking back today through the LINACRE QuARTERLY open windows of Vatican II, we wonder that one frail Irish woman achieved so perfectly (in 1937) the broadness and spirit of 1967 that even Cardinal Suenens found noth-ing to alter in her rule. · t For each of her Sisters, then, there is religious maturity and individual responsibility. Each has freely chosen to live 24 hours a day, year in and year out, in absolute selflessness and close union with God. She builds in her heart, as St. Catherine of Siena recommended of old, a cell that she never leaves, in which she offers praise and unceasing homage to God. Two and a h alf years of pos-tulancy and no vitiate develop this life in which she prepares, growing in self-knowledge arid openness by living in intelligent, responsible obedience. After novitia te comes pro-fessional training - three to seven years, depending on her field, -then a mission assignment. After each three or four year tour of duty, the Sister is given the opportunity to develop her speciality by further study toward higher degrees in medi-cine, science or nursing. The Sister doctors often seek studies at Tropi-cal Hospital in Liverpool, or in obstetrics, internal medicine or pedia tries. How does one sum up this work after thirty years? Geographically: the M.M.M. are chiefly in Africa (Nigeria, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia), with one house each in Formosa, Italy, and Spain. Statistically: 26 missions, all general hospitals except two ma-ternity, two combined leprosy and general, and three resident clinics. In NovEMBER addition, 16 non-resident leprosy clinics and villages; many maternity . centers run by local midwives under M.M.M. supervision; ISO temporary or bush clinics; 10 schools of nurs-ing. Membership: 450 Sisters, among them 40 physicians; several phar-macists, two near-dentists; 200 in nursing, instructors and hospital administrators; 100 in related science fields or social work. The remainder are students or in non-medical but essential fields (e.g., architecture, journalism, home economics, business management, secretarial services) . And how are the M.M.M. ac-cepted by the people? Among those to whom white women are com-pletely strange, there may be a slow response to in-patient status, until people learn by experience (often compelled by critical necessity) to break through their own barriers. Humorously speaking, once accepted, hospital · capacity is daily exceeded. Beds on verandas, and patients in no beds at all are a common occur-rence, so that total in-patient serv-ice is invariably at variance with the paper capacity. The difficulty then is obviously in keeping the staff on its feet and able to cope with the situation. From the religious point of view, results can be clearly as-sessed. Directly, religious training is given to women, especially those in nursing studies who desire it. Many of these young women become lead-ers . in their areas, and most useful in bringing hygiene as well as ·a Christian spirit in to the lives of their neighbors. Direct work with the Legion.- of Mary, with which the M.M.M. have always been associated (Mother Mary herself was one of 343 .' ':, ', ·, ) ·; .,. the first Legionaries to work with Frank Duff) is fruitful. Through training local legionaries and guiding them in this richly spiritual aposto-la te, the Sisters have rooted a key lay activity in each area. This has been especially true among their leprosy patients, where numbers have totalled between 15,000 and 20,000 in one Diocese alone . . Again, Christian influence is strong in work with young mothers. This is begun through ante- and post-natal clinics, child welfare and nutrition clinics, and in the fertility clinics which have cooperated in bringing long-desired offspring to many a Chris-tian family. Medicine breaks through barriers and taboos, enabling Sisters to enter homes and reach souls opening the way for . the grace of Redemption. Since the M.M.M. life is not institutionalized, the Sisters work out daily into the social milieu of their neighbors. Their apostolate of personal con tact is like a leaven and fits perfectly the picture of th~ Religious in the modern world drawn by the Council Fathers in their decrees. A unique work dear 'to Mother Mary's heart and to her Sisters as well, specifically provided for in the M.M.M. rule, is that of helping to establish and form native Sister-hoods for their particular apos-tolates. M.M.M. Sisters help and guide them until they are able to stand on their own. Worthy of mention is this: one of Mother's first Nigerian companions in 1921 became a religious, in a Nigerian Sisterhood. When Mother Mary visited Nige~ia in 1960, the two met 344 again, both of them Mother G. rals of their respective congrega t "1s. Last of all, how does the we . pay its way? From the first, when r. )ther Mary Martin sailed from h na-tive Ireland with two comr 1ions and $70 in her pocket, the sters have depended totally on tL vol-untary contributions of Ca r )lies. Their only outstanding ben 1ctor has been Richard Cardinal C t 1ing, who invited the M.M.M. his Archdiocese of Boston in 195 and gave them their. U.S. headql rters in Winchester. Seeing that t} Sis-ters were severely cramped C. lack of space and their rapid g 1wth, His Eminence built for tr .n a residence and student hos l in Drogheda. Here, their Intern ; ional Missionary Training Hospit: has been slowly building over th ( years to provide a center where m sian-keyed nursing and intern exp< ience . is available to all Religious. side from Cardinal Cushing's mu r'tcent gifts, all finances for educatir ~ Sis-ters and maintaining mission: have ce>me from small donations of hari-table friends in Ireland an•'· the U.S.A. Most of the missions can be ;orne-what self-supporting. One oubtand-ing exception is the Turkana swtion, comprised of a four-Sister unit laboring in the heat and- isolation of Kenya's barren desert. H ere thousands of nomad Turkanese liter-ally live in starvation. The Sisters distribute meager food supplies, principally dona ted by the U.S. Government, while giving medical and health services. To aid in in ter-center travel (there are at least 4 LINACRE QuARTERLY widely separated clinics) and to sup-ply a vital need for an, emergency supply line to the outside world, nearly 200 miles away over im-possible roads, Mother Mary as-signed two Sisters to learn flying. The pilot now on duty is Sister M. Sean of Portsmouth, New Hamp-shire.- She flies a little Piper Cub, donated and kept flying by friends in Seattle, Washington. Another exception to the pay-as-you-go program is the leprosy work in Ogoja province, Nigeria, where for more than 20 years the M.M.M. have devoted themselves to victims of Hansen's disease. Again, through small donations from many friends, this work has been kept supplied. One physician of some years ex-perience, Sister M. Theophane from Newcastle, England, completed a Master's degree in Public Health at Harvard in 1966, in order to head up the leprosy elimi~ation work, under special sponsorship of the Knights of Malta. Magnificent work has been done under Sister Anne Marie, O.T.R., of Lynn, Mass., in rehabilitating lep-rosy patients. Sister not only begged, bought or pried away from printers, NOVEMBER potters, carpenters and a host of others a vast supply of equipment and machinery, she obtained and set up all the electric equipment, generators to benches, for her print-ing shop, pottery department, photo-graphic center, carpentry and welding shops. Until she opened the Occu-pational Therapy center, the chief occupation of 98 percent of the patients was sitting in the sun. Only enough small farming or hut build-ing was done to keep themselves alive,- and many of course were too crippled for that. Since 1960, hundreds have learned trades or skills, as well as the joy of work-ing. Patients have been discharged well equipped to be self-supporting, and have returned to their homes bringing sought-for skills. Many patients, however, too crippled to return home, prefer to remain in the M.M.M. villages, where wheel chairs provide dignity with locomotion for those who once crawled around on stumps of hands and knees. Results of the therapy work are easily seen, and have amazed all who knew the villages in earlier days. As one Bishop put it: "That Sister got them all up off their mud stoops and has them hard at work- and that's a first class miracle." 345 ~ .. 

The Medical Missionaries of Mary

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The Medical Missionaries of Mary

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