Even with Sun overhead, it is a dark day in Phoenix as Saint Joseph turns his back on Saint Joseph Hospital for discarding Mexicans without giving life giving care.

Antonio Torres (McBride: Another Arpaio)

PHOENIX (By Jon Garrido, The Jon Garrido News Network) November 10, 2008 ― The Religious Order of the Sisters of Mercy (RSM) is an order of Catholic women founded by Catherine McAuley in Dublin, Ireland in 1831.

Sisters of Mercy take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and service. They continue to participate in the life of the surrounding community keeping with their mission of serving the poor and needy engaging in teaching, medical care, and community programs.

The Sisters have a mission, vision & values that profess to affirm the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of all life. The Sisters claim to exist to foster the healing ministry of the Catholic Church

The Sisters state they are compassionate and provide direct services to the poor and advocate on their behalf to seek to relieve misery and to address its causes either through direct service or indirectly through influence and to strengthen the mission of the Church in the world.

The Sisters profess to believe in the sacredness of all life, and therefore in the dignity of the human person and the promotion of human wholeness; In a spirit of mercy that cares for the suffering and the dying; In a spirit of hospitality that welcomes all in need; In the rights of all persons to quality health care and our responsibility to act as advocates for the poor and those with special needs; In the stewardship of resources for the enhancement of human life; and in ethical principles.

Saint Joseph's Catholic Hospital's mission is supposedly committed to furthering the healing ministry of Jesus, dedicating resources to delivering compassionate services and advocating for patients who are poor and disenfranchised.

All of the above may be true everywhere in the world where there is a Religious Order of the Sisters of Mercy but the words ring hollow at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Sisters of Mercy showed no mercy to Antonio Torres in Phoenix, Arizona. The name: Sisters of Mercy is a contradiction. An more appropriate name would be the Sisters of the Ungodly for they have failed to abide and live by their vows.

To Mexico and Back

On November 9, Hispanic News published "St. Joseph's Hospital Dumps Near Dead Body in Mexico" originally published in the New York Times and details how St. Joseph's Hospital deliberately and intentionally plotted, carried out a plan to recklessly damage, destroy or obstruct access to urgent care for Antonio Torres, a lawful immigrant farm worker living in Arizona by transporting Antonio comatose and connected to a ventilator to Mexico to avoid caring for Antonio.

Federal regulations require hospitals to discharge safely patients who need continuing care. Antonio Torres needed continuing care but St. Joseph's Hospital failed to abide with this degree. More importantly, St. Joseph's Hospital is judged by a higher standard of having a fiduciary responsibility to Jesus and the Catholic Church.

Antonio Torres’s journey through the American and Mexican health care systems began at dawn on June 7, when the 19-year-old, driving to work across a rutted, gravelly dirt road on the ranch where his family lives, flipped his pick-up truck. He was found, unconscious, about 150 feet from his vehicle by a ranch hand.

For two decades, his father, Jesús, a legal immigrant, had lived on both sides of the border, harvesting the fields of Arizona while traveling regularly to visit his family in northern Mexico. Last year, his wife, Gloria, and their four children received their green cards and joined him in a farm workers’ community outside Gila Bend.

That June morning, the Torreses followed behind an ambulance that took Antonio to St. Joseph’s, the flagship hospital of Catholic Healthcare West, where he was admitted to the intensive care unit with a severe traumatic brain injury, bruised lungs and abdominal injuries. Two days later, his parents, “frozen with fear,” the elder Mr. Torres said, were unprepared for a hospital social worker’s frank assessment of their son’s prognosis.

“She said there was no hope for our son and that it would be best to unplug him,” Mr. Torres said. “She said, ‘You have to think what kind of life this is, hooked up to a ventilator. And if he wakes up, he will not be able to do much.’ When we said, ‘No!’ the social worker said that, well, then, without insurance, they couldn’t keep him.”

According to the social worker’s notes, the hospital anticipated the patient would need long-term ventilator care and, as a legal immigrant with less than five years in this country, he would not qualify for Arizona’s Medicaid coverage.

Five days after the accident, the social worker, using an interpreter, called the public hospital in Mexicali to arrange Antonio Torres’s repatriation. “Patient accepted for admission,” her notes say.

The following day, the notes add, “Parents upset.”

“Picture this,” he said. “It’s probably in a six-by-eight room. The social worker says, ‘Gee, that would be like taking money and throwing it down a black hole because this kid is going to die.’ I’ve got Mom and Dad crying, and she says other patients would be better suited for that kind of investment.”

The hospital delayed transporting Antonio to Mexico for a few days, giving the elder Mr. Torres time to search for a nursing home. He came up empty, so the hospital moved to repatriate his son even though he was not only comatose and dependent on a ventilator but also had a very high white blood cell count, indicating infection.

Antonio Torres had pneumonia. A hospital physician temporarily blocked his transfer.

Two days later, early on June 20, his white blood cell count was still too high to meet the physician’s condition for transfer, according to the social worker’s notes. Nonetheless, a few hours later, with the same physician’s consent, Antonio Torres was placed on a portable ventilator for his departure.

Sister McBride said St. Joseph patients were transferred to Mexico during “a window of time” when they are stable but “still acute” because Mexican hospitals did not want them “down the phase of recovery.”

But Dr. Caleb Cienfuegos, director of the public hospital in Mexicali, said, referring to the younger Mr. Torres, “I personally would not have transferred the patient in that state.”

What can Phoenix Hispanic Catholics do? Not much other than to leave the Catholic Church and seek a new church. We have no advocate in Phoenix. There is no Good Shepherd in Phoenix, Arizona. There actually is but he hides in his cave in downtown Phoenix oblivious to the outcry of Phoenix Hispanics. Since there is no one to feed and tend the sheep, our only option is to leave the Phoenix Catholic Church to seek and find a church where Hispanics will be welcomed.

This silence of the Phoenix Catholic Church condones the persecution of Hispanics by Arpaio. Add to this now, flippant, and cavalier disregard for human life displayed by McBride representing St. Joseph's Hospital. All of this seen as a slap in the face at the Hispanic Catholic community which now surpasses 75% of Phoenix Catholics. All of theses experiences of non support for the Phoenix Hispanic community are major factors in the flight of Hispanic Catholics leaving the Phoenix Catholic Church to become Evangelicals.

While Catholic Masses are full of Hispanics, all Phoenix Catholic Churches have revolving doors. As new Hispanic Catholics come up from Mexico, Phoenix Mexican Catholics leave Phoenix Catholic Churches for churches where they are accepted. The Phoenix Catholic Churches have become a portal to Evangelical churches.

If revolving doors did not exist, the Phoenix Hispanic Catholic population would surpass 90% of the total Phoenix Catholic population.

To use monetary factors ― as St. Joseph's Hospital has come to worship ― the loss of Catholic membership will have a greater monetary adverse impact than the cost of providing urgent care to those who are uninsured.