Ramsey County History – Fall 2021: “Our Lady of Good Counsel/Our Lady of Peace: Two Names, Decades of Daily Mercy, and Innumerable Blessings at St. Paul’s Free Hospice Home”

Our Lady of Good Counsel/Our Lady of Peace: Two Names, Decades of Daily Mercy, and Innumerable Blessings at St. Paul’s Free Hospice Home
Author: Christina Capecchi

Eighty years ago on December 7, 1941—shorty after radio newscasters began reporting the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii—nine nuns opened the doors of a former telephone toll office on St. Anthony Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, and welcomed curious neighbors to tour the newly established Our Lady of Good Counsel Home. This free hospice for the city’s cancerous poor was the sixth of seven facilities set up around the country—a ministry started by Mother Alphonsa (Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, daughter of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne) and her friend Mother Rose (Alice Huber) at the turn of the twentieth century. At that time, the pair had been accepted as Third Order Dominican religious and were called the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. They and their religious community started caring for patients at two homes in New York State. After Mother Alphonsa’s death in 1926, Mother Rose and other Hawthorne Dominicans continued the ministry—caring for cancer patients at homes in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Georgia, Minnesota, and Ohio. The St. Paul home, rebuilt in 1981, stands in the same location. It is now known as Our Lady of Peace Home and is operated by the local Franciscan Health Community, but its mission remains the same—providing free, compassionate end-of-life care for those in need.
PDF of C. Capecchi article