A day after the Franklin Graham-led Samaritan’s Purse revealed they were stepping back from work on a second field hospital to be housed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Mount Sinai Hospital, which was leading the effort, informed the cathedral Thursday that they will no longer be using the church’s space.
“We were notified this morning that Mount Sinai will not be pursuing its plans to build a field hospital at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at this moment. Our commitment to Mount Sinai and to the city, our longtime partners, stands firm, and we will do whatever is in our power to aid the medical workers heroically putting themselves on the front line to help the sick,” a statement from the cathedral to The Christian Post said Thursday.
“As we continue to stand ready to support all in this crisis, we reaffirm our core mission and staunch belief in the worth and dignity of all people, and open our virtual doors to all those who want to participate in Holy Week services,” the church added.
The decision comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that New York state was continuing to see a slowdown in the rate of hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions as social distancing efforts being taken to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus continued to work. Thursday saw the state’s lowest hospitalization rate yet with a 200-patient net increase in hospitalizations and 64-patient net increase in ICU admissions.
The state, however, also saw its highest number of deaths in a single day. A total of 799 people died of complications from the coronavirus in 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths to 7,067. More than 149,000 infections have been confirmed in the state and nearly half of those are in New York City.
In an interview with CP on Wednesday, Melissa Strickland, Samaritan’s Purse’s senior director of communications, said they would be pausing work on the field hospital as they were not sure if it would be needed.
“At this point we have taken a pause on the work as we assess whether this is a needed site or not,” Strickland said. “We are looking at very large tents that we would be putting up and so that would be a lot of manpower and a lot of work if we have to take it back down. And so we’ve taken a pause at this point in doing that. And that’s not for any reason except that we’re wanting to make sure this is even a needed expansion before we move forward.”
Prior to this development, there had been concerns about possible tensions in the proposed partnership between Mount Sinai and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine stemming from Samaritan’s Purse being introduced as a partner on the project.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which is located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The Episcopal Church, which has about 1.6 million members nationwide, is an LGBT inclusive denomination. Samaritan’s Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization whose staff adhere to biblically based Christian beliefs and values.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair
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