NURSES HONOUR CRIMEA PIONEERS

Florence Nightingale in every age'
rr HE centenary of the heroic work of Florence Nightingale and her nurses in the Crimea was celebrated by hundreds of Catholic nurses on Tuesday.
About 300 from hospitals in and around London went to Solemn Benediction in the Church of St. John of Jerusalem at the Hospital of SS. John and Elizabeth, St. John's Wood.
Their presence in this church recalled old days and new ways.
The hospital is conducted by Sisters of Mercy, some of whose predecessors went to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale from the convent in Bermondsey. And the church is the church of the Knights of Malta, who in Italy run an airplane service for invalids.
Nineteen centuries
Benediction was given by Fr. B. McGuinness. and Fr. Agnellus Andrew. 0.F.M.. preached. Many of the nurses-members of the Catholic Nurses' Guild could not find room in the church and heard the service through loudspeakers in the grounds.
The centenary was celebrated in the Sacred Heart Church in Exeter during the Plymouth diocesan rally of the Catholic Nurses' Guild. Here the preacher was the guild's national chaplain. Fr. Denis Murphy.
Fr. Murphy paid tribute to Florence Nightingale as a woman with a mission who saved hundreds of lives and reorganised nursing. At the same time he pointed out that if they studied the history of social welfare-including nursing-"you will soon discover that you are studying the history of the Church throughout the 19 Christian centuries.
Tranquil hour
"You will find that it was the voluntary organisations-a term for so many years synonymous with the Church-which did all the pioneer work and bore the heat and the burden of the day, and that it was the State, the country. the Government, call it what you like, which, like the men in the parable, came into the vineyard at the cool and tranquil llth hour when the risks had been taken and the battle fought and won. . . .
"It was the spread of Christianity which brought nursing into prominence.
"Indeed, every age has had its Florence Nightingale.
"There was St. Radegund of Potiers. a Queen of France and one of the first French abbesses who founded a convent where she nursed the sick and lepers until her death in 589.
"Another medical abbess was St. Hildegardc of Bingen on the Rhine, who devoted most of the 82 years of her life to the sick before she died in 1180. If you want other outstanding women of their age. there is still St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Catherine of Sienna.