1937

THE RAWALPINDI MEDICAL MISSON TO INDIA

Twenty Fifth Anniversary, 1937

The Society’s founder, Dr Anna Dengel, shows us in her own words how to use a jubilee year creatively

In 1937, in the Medical Missionary magazine, Anna Dengel wrote:

"In this Jubilee Year of the foundation of the organisation known as the Rawalpindi Medical Mission in India, let us briefly review the purpose and history of its foundation and the results achieved by its members.

Various factors led up to its foundation. First there was Monsignor Wagner, then Prefect Apostolic of Kashmir and Kafristan, who after 16 years in North India, came to the conclusion that it was only through women, preferably Sisters, doing medical work that India could be helped.

Then there was Doctor Agnes McLaren to whom Monsignor Wagner told his problems and dreams. The story of how she struggled to obtain women doctors for India and how she also founded St Catherine’s Hospital in Rawalpindi has been ofttimes retold.  It was she who persuaded me to become a missionary doctor and suggested the University College of Cork in which to study because she had found in Sir Bertram Windle, who was president at that time, and advocate for her scheme for Sisters to study medicine.

In the meantime, the Rawalpindi Medical Mission to India was founded in England.  This was composed of committees of ladies who worked heroically to assist the financing of the newly opened St Catherine’s Hospital. I took charge of the hospital in 1920.  The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary did the nursing.  All these years, the committees have carried on bravely and perseveringly.  Lady Margaret Howard was the president of the London Committee until her death; Lady Anne Kerr, the president of the Scotland Committee; His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, lately deceased, the patron and one of the trustees. The reports show the names of the eminent men and women interested in the cause who have given their support and encouragement.

It was while I was in charge of St Catherine’s Hospital that it became absolutely clear to me that a trained personnel was needed to cope with the exigencies of the missions.  The day of untrained people, no matter how heroic they might otherwise be, was over even in the remotest parts of Asia.  Missionaries, qualified as doctors and pharmacists, or trained as nurses and midwives, were needed for hospitals, dispensaries, maternity and child-welfare work, sanatoria, leprosaria, and also to train local nurses and to open medical schools for women; in short to do every kind of medical charity in the great mission fields of the Church. 

This was the motive which prompted us in 1925 to start a new religious community: The Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries. The Society was organised according to the plan of Doctor Agnes McLaren had so long desired.  Although it was an innovation, we received much encouragement. The ice, however, was not completely broken until last year on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, when the decree was issued, which not only permitted, but urged, Sisters to study medicine and other professional medical subjects: “The Sisters should obtain certificates as doctors and nurses.” This was the goal of Doctor McLaren had struggled for and, if she were alive today, she would rejoice to see the fulfilment of her dreams.

Soon after the foundation of the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries, Rt. Rev. Msgr. Winkley, the late Apostolic Prefect of Kashmir, invited us to undertake the work of Holy Family Hospital in the city of Rawalpindi.  It opened its doors to the first patients in February, 1928.  After some time, he wished to amalgamate St Catherine’s with it, so that Holy Family Hospital now represents Doctor McLaren’s foundation. 

The sacrifices, anxieties, joys and sorrows, of the past 25 years of the committee members of the Rawalpindi Medical Mission in India and of the personnel of the hospital cannot be put into reports or statistics.  A slight idea of the items that can be set down in cold figures may be gained from the following: the first report in 1911-1912 mentioned six in-patients; this year’s record records over 1,000 in-patients. 

Our heartfelt prayers and thanks are due to our benefactors and friends and may we express the hope that they will continue their interest and gain new friends for us, in order to enable us to expand our work. 

Let us thank God for all His blessings during the last 25 years and let us begin the second 25 years with as much zeal, charity and confidence as Doctor McLaren, the foundress, and the other pioneers had, that Holy Family Hospital may become and ever better and greater centre of Catholic Charity. With their spirit, we may hopefully look to the future.”

Nearly one hundred years after the Society’s founding in 1925, there are so many blessings - too many to count.

Let's listen to the Blessing Song by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, composed in 1996 - found opposite.