Thursday, January 01, 2009

Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth: Charity Commission ruling

Briefing: this is a vindication of those who resisted the attempts to secularise the hospital under Lord Bridgeman. It doesn't deal clearly with the continuing problems, upon which we have blogged here.

From The Tablet (30/12/08), in part: THE CHARITY Commission has sharply reprimanded
the previous leadership of a private Catholic hospital over its handling of a dispute
about its code of ethics, writes Isabel de Bertodano.

Following a nine-month inquiry, the commission this week issued a report that criticised the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in north London for its failure to implement a new code approved by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor last year to clarify the charity’s opposition to abortion. The report also questioned the decision of the previous leadership to allow a group of NHS GPs to move on to the hospital’s premises, because of the potential conflict of ethical interest between public-sector doctors and the private Catholic charity. Furthermore, the report said that the hospital’s then board of trustees had “misled” the commission and ignored requests for information.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Charity Commission, when giving permission, were assured by the Hospital Board that the NHS/GP practice would sign up to the Hospital's Code of Ethics. In fact that was not true and only when it was too late to prevent the entry of the NHS/GP practice was the lie discovered. So now there is a practice in this Catholic Hospital contracted with the NHS to provide every kind of family planning service regardless of whether it complies with Catholic teaching. Misleading? Deceit or worse? Can this sort of thing be allowed to happen with impunity? Could this amount to a criminal offence?

Pope Leo XIII's Prayer to St Michael

Holy Michael, Archangel, defend us in the day of battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust down to Hell Satan, and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen