Holy Cross trained nurses, built interfaith bonds

Could Catholic nuns have helped forestall the current nursing shortage in Utah and throughout the Intermountain West? What if Salt Lake Regional Medical Center was still Holy Cross Hospital, with its nursing school taught by sisters in white habits?

It's a question that likely has no definitive answer, but the history of how that school trained generations of nurses — and tried to foster something of an interfaith "laboratory" in the process — is being explored this weekend in Salt Lake City.

For Sisters of the Holy Cross, establishing a Catholic school and hospital in the 1875 Utah Territory was a pioneering venture based not only in religious faith and care for the poor, but in the hope of building bridges with Latter-day Saints through charitable works.

The legacy of education and health care they built for future generations is being celebrated this weekend, as a national conference focusing on their history in Utah plays out at the Red Lion Hotel.

The Holy Cross History Association began its annual meeting here Thursday, drawing several dozen people from across the country to examine Catholic heritage in the Intermountain West. A particular focus is the Holy Cross Nursing School, which trained nearly 1,100 women from 1901 to 1973, when the school was closed as nursing training moved from hospitals to colleges and universities. Many were Catholic, some were LDS and others came from a variety of faith backgrounds.

Jessie Embry, oral history director at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, said she began exploring what has become something of a forgotten chapter in the history of Utah's Catholic Church after her mother — who trained as a nurse at the Holy Cross Nursing School — died a few years ago.

The task was complicated because there were no written records at the Sisters of the Holy Cross mother house at Notre Dame, and only a few at the Utah State Historical Society. As a result, she tried to recapture some of what occurred there through 30 oral history interviews with women who attended the school, mostly in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

The first Sisters of the Holy Cross came to Utah in 1875, where they set up a hospital for Catholic miners and other poor migrants who had come to the territory looking for work amid the majority LDS population. While many outside the area thought their efforts foolhardy, their work drew praise from many. As the success of the hospital grew, the sisters opened the Holy Cross Nursing School in 1901, seeking to ameliorate a critical shortage of nurses in the area.