Signed into existence by President Abraham Lincoln, for 150 years, since the outbreak of the Civil War, Providence Hospital has stood as a beacon of Catholic health care and healing ministry to the citizens of Washington, D.C. Founded by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul of Emmitsburg it is the oldest continuously operating hospital in the nation’s capital and  was fittingly celebrated at a June 27 Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

“They were here in 1865 during the cholera epidemic. They were here in 1895 during an epidemic of malaria. They were here in 1918 during the influenza epidemic,” he said. “In 1945, they were here in the midst of World War II and the terrible scourge of polio. In the 1980s, they were here when the epidemic of AIDS began and now as it continues in a different population.”