The New York Times celebrates the extraordinary service of Catholic Sisters during the terrible “Spanish Flu” of 1918.
On March 20, 2020, The New York Times published an article with this title: “We Should All Be More Like the Nuns of 1918.” The caption reads: “The sisters of Philadelphia were lifesavers during the Spanish flu epidemic. They are an inspiration today.”
What did Catholic nuns do in 1918 that inspires people even today?
The author, a writer and journalist called Kiley Bense, was researching her grandmother’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her grandmother, born in 1917, survived the “Spanish Flu,” the terrible pandemic which hit many countries between 1918 and 1920. It was far more devastating than the current COVID-19. It came towards the end of World War I, multiplying the suffering of people who had already suffered and lost much during the War. The number of victims was incredibly high: About fifty million deaths worldwide! To give you an idea of what that number means, it was thirty-four million more than those killed in World War I.
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Fr Joe Mannath SDB
