Hospital's Catholic heritage preserved

By Rob Herbst
The Catholic Week
MOBILE — Providence Hospital on Airport Boulevard in Mobile is no longer a Catholic hospital, but its Catholic heritage can still be found throughout the Archdiocese of Mobile and beyond.
Sacred items that were once housed at the hospital — especially those from the Bruno Family Chapel — have been distributed to appropriate parishes and ministries.
Steps to transfer the sacred items began months before the University of South Alabama Health Care Authority’s purchase of Providence Hospital from Ascension, a Catholic health system, last fall. According to Msgr. William Skoneki, Vicar General for the Archdiocese of Mobile, a committee was formed that included members of Providence Hospital, USA Health and the archdiocese to properly identify, remove and distribute the items. 
Ministries within the Daughters of Charity, who founded the original Providence Hospital in 1854, were first considered. They received numerous small paintings, 100 crucifixes and other small items. 
“(Then it was) what could the archdiocese use?” Msgr. Skoneki explained. “The goal of the archdiocese, for me, was to preserve the memory as much as possible of where it came from and put items where appropriate.”
For example, a statue of St. Joseph was given to St. Joseph Parish, Maysville. 
Statues of St. Vincent de Paul were given to St. Vincent de Paul Parishes in Mobile and Tallassee.
“It was important to spread it around,” Msgr. Skoneki said.
Other notable items transferred from Providence Hospital included a statue of Jesus in front of the hospital’s Building B that is now in St. Michael Catholic High School’s Rosary garden; a statue of Mary that sat in the hospital’s lobby is now in St. Ignatius Parish’s Marian Center; a statue of the Holy Infant of Prague is now inside the Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception; a crucifix from the Bruno Family Chapel was given to Corpus Christi Parish; and St. Pius X Parish in Mobile received a statue of St. Anne with the child Virgin Mary. 
Chapel items including vestments, altar clothes, chalices and other items used at Mass were offered to parishes through the archdiocese.
Those wanting to see the large marble statue of St. Vincent de Paul that sat outside the hospital’s Airport Boulevard entrance will have to take a road trip. It will be appropriately displayed at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham once construction on the hospital’s atrium is complete.
Some items still remain in Providence Hospital. Historical displays which highlight the Daughters of Charity remain on every floor. Stained glass windows from the early 1900s also remain. The windows were in Providence Hospital when it was located on Springhill Avenue and were brought to the current Providence Hospital when it was built in 1987.
Statues of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Joseph also remain.
The Archdiocese of Mobile will also continue to have a relationship with USA Health. It has a chaplain assigned to visiting and ministering to Catholic patients at all USA Health hospitals. 
Mass continues to be celebrated in the Bruno Family Chapel at 11 a.m. on weekdays and 2 p.m. on Sunday.