Catholic church lawyers want 'religious items' at Carney Hospital returned

The main Carney Hospital building on Dorchester Avenue includes statues, crucifixes, and other Catholic "religious items" that the Archdiocese of Boston says belongs to the church— and they want them returned if Carney closes. Reporter file photo

There are many parties to the bankruptcy proceedings in Texas involving Steward Health Care — and several are making their feelings known about Steward’s current proposal to close Dorchester’s Carney Hospital, perhaps as soon as the end of August.

One of the parties that weighed in with a legal response to the court in Houston on Tuesday is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston (RCAB), which owned Carney Hospital prior to 2010.

Bottom line: The Catholic Church doesn’t object to the Carney closing. But it wants its stuff back.

“The RCAB remains the owner of the religious items and symbols located in the Caritas Hospitals, including Carney,” two attorneys for the church said in a letter filed on July 30. “The religious items at Carney consist of property with profound religious significance and are important symbols of Catholic identity.”

The lawyers for the Archdiocese say the sales agreement between Caritas Christi— the non-profit entity that the Archdiocese controlled until they sold their hospitals to Steward in 2010— explicitly deals with the hospital chapel, crucifixes, and other items that are still considered the property of the church— including the Carney name itself.

“The Agreement provides for the return of such items, and the cessation of the use of the specific names of the Caritas Hospital in question, if the Caritas Hospital in question is no longer operated pursuant to the terms of the Agreement,” the letter reads. “The goal of the Agreement was to ensure that the Caritas Hospitals continued to maintain their Catholic identity and to operate as Catholic health care facilities in accordance with Catholic norms.”

Before it was run by the Archdiocese, Carney Hospital was owned and operated by the Daughters of Charity, an order of Catholic nuns who specialize in health care. The Daughters ran Carney and another Dorchester hospital— St. Margaret’s, a maternity-focused facility on Jones Hill that closed in 1993— along with a nursing college, Laboure, that was once housed on the Carney campus in Dorchester. The Daughters transferred ownership of both Carney and Laboure to Caritas Christi in 1997.

Like many hospitals, Carney has a chapel for patients and, until recently, offered Catholic Mass on Sundays. The exterior of the main building on Dorchester Avenue features a white-relief statue of the Virgin Mary above the entrance to the main lobby and a large crucifix on the top of the building.

According to the brief filed with the US bankruptcy court in Houston by Francis C. Morrissey and D. Ethan Jeffrey, the Archdiocese “does not oppose the proposed funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts nor the proposed closure of the hospitals.”

A judge is expected to rule on Steward’s latest plan to close Carney and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, Mass. on Aug. 13.


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