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HUMAN INTEREST
STORIES FROM THE LIFE OF THE ARCHBISHOP
~ UNEXPECTED VISIT INSPIRES A RELIGIOUS CALL: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen made an unexpected visit to a hospital in Bronxville, New York, which resulted in a nurse becoming a nun! The following is the testimony of that nun, Sr. Mary Loretta. ~ |
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 It was sometime in the 1950’s that it happened on a freezing cold wintry night. It was snowing hard and sleeting. I was working at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, New York. Because of the weather, no one had visitors that evening and we nurses were worrying how we were going to get our cars out of the parking lot at midnight. Suddenly, the elevator door opened and who walked out of the elevator but Bishop Sheen. I don’t remember the patient’s name he came to see, but I remember her very well. She was an elderly woman, very quiet and always grateful and smiling, but never looked for any special attention even though she was quite ill. She was not in a private room and only a few minutes after Bishop Sheen entered the room, laughter filled the corridor. The patients in the other rooms all perked up and wanted to know who could be so happy and joyful on such a dark dreary night. He stayed about an hour and when he left the room, he came to the nurses station and asked if we would like his blessing. He blessed each of us individually and said, “What more can you do?” When he entered the elevator, it was filled with doctors who had just completed an emergency operation and were on their way to the coffee shop. They were more than happy to see him even though they were all denominations of faith. He was very happy to join them.
The next morning a group of the doctors came up on the floor and wanted to know who the patient was he came to see on such a night. They were dumbfounded when they saw the little woman. She said, “I don’t know why he came to see me. He is a very busy man.” She said she worked over twenty years in the office. All she did was slit the envelopes open of the hundreds of letters he received every day, but never had an occasion to speak to him. She just passed the mail on to the secretaries. He had just flown in from Rome that night and went straight to his office to greet all the workers, but failed to see the little woman who opened the envelopes. When he heard she was in the hospital, he put his coat back on and dashed out the door. He said he was going to visit her.
The doctors said they asked him many questions that night in the coffee shop and without any hesitation, he answered them all. It was nearly midnight when they finished and one of the doctors asked if he could call his chauffeur to bring his car around to the front door.
Bishop Sheen said, “Oh that won’t be necessary. I have no chauffeur, and I have no car.” They all said with one voice, “How did you ever get here?” He said, “By train.” At that, they were speechless and could ask him no more questions.
 As for myself, all the way home that night, the words, “What more can you do?” kept running through my head, and I know it had a definite meaning later in why I chose to enter the Poor Clare Monastery in preference to a nursing order and why I am a Hermit of Bethlehem today and still I hear those words, “What more can you do?”
Sr. Mary Loretta, Hermit
Hermit of Bethlehem in the Heart of Jesus
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