BALTIMORE (RNS) — As the U.S. Catholic bishops gathered for their conference’s fall meeting on Tuesday (Nov. 12), they were expected to discuss their response to the presidential election, implementing Pope Francis’ agenda and the recently ended Vatican summit on the church’s future.
A group of nurses was there to remind them that Catholics wanted them to talk about the Catholic Church’s role as a major provider of health care in the United States too. At a rally outside the Marriott Waterfront Hotel, members of National Nurses United demonstrated to bring to the bishops’ attention their concerns about Ascension, one of the largest Catholic hospital systems in the country.
“Church fathers, tell Ascension it’s time to start acting Catholic,” Meghan Ross, a Catholic nurse who has been at Ascension St. Agnes in Baltimore for eight years, said at the rally.
In January, National Nurses United, a union representing about 225,000 registered nurses, released a report charging that Ascension had closed labor and delivery units at a rate higher than the national average between 2019 and 2021. Those closures disproportionately impacted areas with high poverty rates and Black and Latino communities, the report said.
Beyond the union’s concerns, national reporting from The New York Times has raised concerns about Ascen …