• We have one solid comfort amidst this little tripping about, our hearts can always be in the same place, centered in God, for whom alone we go forward or stay back.

    - Catherine McAuley

 
Home Works of Mercy Healthcare

Healthcare

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"By collaborating with others in works of mercy, we continually learn from them how to be more merciful."
-- Constitutions, Sisters of Mercy

As one of the first charitable groups to care for the sick in the early history of this country, the Sisters of Mercy founded many hospitals. To these pioneers of nursing, caring for patients was an art and a profession. High healthcare standards and levels of care achieved by these early sisters continue to serve today as models for several nationally recognized healthcare systems.

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Mercy Story

  • The final journey with Mercy

    PodzimekSister Mary Lou Podzimek is the house chaplain at the Dennis & Donna Oldorf Hospice House of Mercy in Hiawatha, Iowa. Mary Lou thinks of her ministry as “sharing the final journey with her patients” as she performs spiritual assessments, assists with funeral plans if they are not complete, prays with the patients and their families, distributes Holy Communion and works with the patient’s clergy and family.

    Recently, Mary Lou took part in a remembrance of the patients she has served during a Lovelights celebration at the Hospice House. In a new tradition, patients’ families, staff, volunteers and community supporters gathered for the holiday season in a remembrance of the hospice patients who have entered eternal rest. The celebration included the lighting of two spruce trees outside the hospice house, prayer, readings from the Gospel of St. Luke, singing Christmas carols to current hospice patients and refreshments of cookies and Wassail.