The name of the region's Catholic health network goes back in time to the 1800s and across the sea to France. It was there that 12 young women in Paris formed a congregation called the Sisters of Bon Secours in 1824.
Bon Secours means "good help" in French, which fit the sisters' mission of nursing the sick and dying in their homes in the devastation after the French Revolution.
The sisters sought to alleviate suffering through "prayer, work and every human encounter."
The congregation extended its mission to the United States in 1881, visiting the poor and sick in Baltimore. There, they established a hospital, a formal home-health-care service, homes for the disabled, and a day care center to help working mothers whose only alternative was to place their children in orphanages.
They branched out to build a network of hospitals, long-term care facilities and health care services in other state s as well, mainly up and down the East Coast, called Bon Secours Health System.
The organization arrived in Virginia in 1966 with the opening of St. Mary's Hospital in Richmond, which grew into a system of hospitals. In 1984, the Catholic diocese transferred ownership of the Maryview hospital in Portsmouth to Bon Secours Virginia Health System.
Then, in 1996, DePaul Medical Center in Norfolk, previously run by the Daughters of Charity, and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News also became part of the system.
The three local hospitals, along with a network of health centers and long-term care facilities throughout the region, now form Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System.
Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@ pilotonline.com
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