Spirit of inclusion
St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Toowoomba celebrates its centenary year
SVPHT Mission Executive, Dr Mark Copland
From the vantage point of 2022 it is hard to imagine the sectarian divide 100 years ago. Like much of the rest of Australia, the Darling Downs region in Queensland was very much divided along Catholic and Protestant lines.
In 1919, the year before the Sisters of Charity arrived in Toowoomba, it was suggested in local media that anti-Catholic forces were behind an arson attack that saw a Sisters of Mercy convent burnt to the ground. A similar attack took place on the local Christian Brothers school and for a time, male parishioners would take turns watching over church properties overnight. It is truly remarkable then to discover that this was the social setting in which the Sisters of Charity built St Vincent’s Hospital, Toowoomba.
With little more than a dream, Sr Mary Canice Bruton headed up a fundraising campaign which garnered support across Southern Queensland. The appeal’s headline read: ‘To all those whose hearts are blessed with feelings of sympathy and compassion for the sick and suffering – irrespective of creed or nationality!’ And the people of the Downs were more than generous.
When the hospital was officially opened on the 19th November 1922, Melbourne Archbishop Daniel Mannix spoke of the support that the Sisters of Charity had received from Catholics and non-Catholics alike in Melbourne and Sydney:
I should like to think that the same is true here, and if it is not true now, I think it will become true as soon as the non-Catholic community here come to realise what this hospital is and what it means not merely to the Catholic community but to the whole community.
As a type of KPI the Sisters kept record of the religious background of all patients admitted to St Vincent’s, Toowoomba. In the second report published in 1926, just over 70 percent of patients were Catholic. Just three years later the 1929 report stated that 54 percent of patients were non-Catholic. The Sisters of Charity had demonstrated in word as well as deed, that the hospital truly was a place of healing for all within the Toowoomba and Darling Downs community.
Fast forward to 2022 and as the hospital celebrates its centenary year, the spirit of inclusion and compassion continues. In 2021 St Vincent’s Private Hospital Toowoomba received the Social Inclusion Award as part of the Business DisABILITY Awards of Australia. On any given Friday you will see staff proudly wearing the staff NAIDOC shirt designed by long standing Gungarri staff member Wade Jackson and his wife Daphne.
The entrance to the new Emergency Department celebrates the diversity of the Darling Downs region as well as honouring the 60 000 years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture.
We hope that we have followed the instructions of Mary Aikenhead:
May each be faithful in doing her (and his) best to keep alive peace and good will.