The Catholic Diocese of Peoria Abandons Haitian Hearts–July 2003--December 2019

 

Peoria Riverfront– 2019

(Photo by John Carroll)

During the Spring of 2003, there were no more meetings with Bishop Jenky regarding Haitian Hearts. In December 2002, OSF had placed Haitian Hearts on suspension after OSF called the American Consulate in Port-au-Prince asking the Consulate officials to stop issuing visas for Haitian children who needed to travel to Peoria and OSF for heart surgery.

I was very disappointed with my meeting in February with Bishop Jenky in the chancery when he refused a petition for a tribunal court against OSF. He was afraid of any embarrassment the tribunal would cause OSF and he was also trying to protect Diocesean financial interests with the Capital Campaign.

During that Spring,  Haitian Hearts wrote up a new agreement for OSF detailing how Haitian Hearts would work. However, Sue Wozniak, CFO at OSF-SFMC, who had been positioned on the “new” Diocesan Haitian Hearts committee, told us she never read the document even after my sister-in-law Diane presented it to her. Why would Wozniak not even read it?

OSF had a new document also with rules for the “new Haitian Hearts”. The new rules stated that OSF would control the visas of the Haitian children. This meant that OSF could send them back to Haiti after their heart surgery whether they were ready to go or not. From my recent past experience with OSF, I thought this policy could endanger the children. Also, OSF’s document stated that the Catholic Diocese of Peoria would pay for costs to children in the hospital that were not covered under the contract. However, the Diocese said they would NOT pay these costs.

So the new OSF document that Wozniak helped create was not realistic. That is why we had to write our own proposal that Wozniak said she did not read.

In May 2003, Monsignor Rohlfs called me and told me that the Sisters had made a financial offer to set aside monies in Children’s Hospital of Illinois to help cover Haitian kids’ surgery. I told him I was grateful for this. But he added that I needed to accept the money before any other detail of the program would be discussed. I told Rohlfs that I needed to see all of the details in OSF’s proposal and that it would be derelict of me to accept the money without doing my due diligence. Rohlfs replied that we had to have a meeting and I, of course, agreed. But I insisted that Haitian Hearts know the rest of the details of OSF’s proposal before I would be able to accept anything.

I also ran into Dr. McShane at mass one evening not long after my Monsignor Rohlfs conversation. McShane stated we needed to have the meeting soon. I figured that both McShane and Rohlfs were trying to get the meeting done as soon as possible so Haitian Hearts would be a “thing of the past” in Peoria.

On July 16, 2003, we finally had our meeting. Joe Piccione greeted me at the door of the Bishop Sheen center with a smile and a handshake which made me worry that the end of Haitian Hearts was near.

The meeting was run by Monsignor Rohlfs and Patricia Gibson. Others in attendance were my brother Tom and sister-in-law Diane, Dr. Gerald McShane (wearing his golf shoes), Sister Diane McGrew from Corporate, Sister Judith Ann Duvall, President of OSF, and a friend of mine who had lost her husband to a heart attack after a bungled ambulance experience. Bishop Jenky was not there.

Monsignor Rohlfs began the meeting by saying that I needed to accept the financial offer from the Sisters. I told him again that I needed to know the “details” of the contract which had been written by OSF and the Diocese. Rohlfs would not divulge the details, but Dr. McShane gave us a hint that the details were “significant”. I realized that the devil is always in the details.

One of Haitian Hearts concerns was that if a Haitian child’s bill ran over what was allotted by the Sisters, Haitian Hearts would be blamed in the media like OSF had done in January 2003. Rohlfs had already said that the Diocese was not going to contribute anything for the Haitian children. Joe Piccione and McShane said that the debt would not be carried over each year but, amazingly, Sister Diane who was present with a red face, stated that Haitian Hearts would be responsible for any debts, that the debts wouldn’t be forgiven at the end of each year, and that there would be no “caps”. This was what I was worried about…. along with the safety of my Haitian kids. Thus, I could see that the OSF people and the Diocese had not really prepared for this meeting and Sister Diane was angry and driving a hard bargain. She was definitely not a happy lady and poor Sister Judith Ann did not say anything again. As President of OSF Corporate, I would have thought that the OSF and the Diocese, would have let her say something, but they didn’t. She had told me in the past (at least twice) that she “would never turn down a Haitian child.” And they did not want Sister Judith Ann on record as turning against the Haitian children which is precisely what she was doing with her silence.

Monsignor Rohlfs was adamant that no details be discussed until I accepted the plan as it was. We obviously could not accept this. If I accepted the financial offer and the rest of the contract was bogus, I was cornered and the Diocese and OSF could say that I refused all help for my Haitian kids. The trap was being set. My brother asked for another meeting so OSF and the Diocese could better understand what Sister Diane was saying.

Rohlfs said we had just 7 minutes left to make our decision. I showed a framed picture of a little Haitian girl named Pamela needing heart surgery and Rohlfs chided me and called Pamela “my advertisement”. Joe Piccione, OSF Corporate Ethicist called me arrogant and told me that I was “not going to back the Sisters into a corner.” (Pamela died in Haiti with no heart surgery.)

Rohlfs ended the meeting in one hour. And even though my brother stated there was much more to discuss and asked for another meeting with the Diocese, Rohlfs said there would be no other meeting. When we asked Rohlfs why there would be no further meetings, he said “because I said so.”

The Diocese had aligned themselves with OSF and the big money in Peoria. Catholic social justice was not discussed by anyone at the meeting except Haitian Hearts. Haitian kids’ lives seemed not important at all to the Diocese and OSF.

I left for Haiti the next day to begin working again. The director of communications for the Diocese, who is a friend of mine, called me in the Miami airport. She was sad to inform me that the Diocese was stopping any support for Haitian Hearts in our efforts to save young Haitian lives.

Elaine Hopkins of the Journal Star interviewed Dr. William Albers, a pediatric cardiologist at OSF. Even though Dr. Albers was not there, and not on the Haitian Hearts committee, he blamed me on the front page of the Journal Star for failing to “negotiate” with the Diocese and OSF. But the truth of it all was that Monsignor Rohlfs and OSF wouldn’t negotiate at all. They had told me to accept their offer without telling me the details of their offer. And Sister Diane McGrew only made issues worse for OSF and the Diocese with her comments at the meeting which caught the Diocesan and OSF leaders off guard.

Traditionally, OSF picks someone peripherally involved in an issue who is well known in the Peoria community to talk to the media when necessary. I actually expected they were going to pick Dr. Albers this time to cast blame my way. Dr. Albers had been missing or nonverbal in the back row at the pediatric cardiac catheterization conferences for the previous year. He rarely said anything when a Haitian patient’s case was presented. This worried me because I thought he might be pulling his support from my Haitian kids just like OSF was doing. Dr. Albers was the founding father of pediatric cardiology in Peoria and one of my mentor physicians. So when Dr. Albers told the media that I would not negotiate, it really hurt. I had been negotiating for years for Haitian lives and never more forcefully than right then.

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The Catholic Diocese of Peoria came out with the press release as follows:

July 18, 2003–

Catholic Diocese of Peoria’s Statement on Haitian Hearts

Peoria—It is with enormous regret that Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, is announcing today that the Diocese of Peoria was unable to successfully facilitate an agreement between OSF St. Francis Medical Center and the Haitian Hearts program. The Diocese originally became involved in the process at the request of the Sisters of the The Third Order of St. Francis. From the beginning, all parties involved were fully aware that there were many obstacles that needed to be overcome for this undertaking to succeed. Despite goodwill on everyone’s part and many hours of hard work, the parties were unable to come to an agreement. The Bishop would like to publicly recognize the zeal and goodness of the many supporters of Haitian Hearts. He would also like to commend the ongoing generosity of the Sister of The Third Order of Saint Francis for their willingness to make a significant financial contribution had this program been successful.

The Diocese will be making no further comment at this time.

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Denouement and Learning Points–2019

1. Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. William Butler Yeats

2. How could things get worse? Things can always get worse.

3. I have not been able to trust people in authority since these events in 2003. But it was good for me because I needed to learn this.

4. I am sorry Haitian kids had to suffer.

5. Today in December 23, 2019, and Sister Judith Ann has never removed the OSF ban on Haitian kids coming to Peoria for heart surgery. And this has cost lives—Jackson, Yarnie, and Maxime to name a few.

6. To deny Haitian kids who had surgery at OSF in the late 90’s the ability to return to OSF for follow up surgery is especially egregious. Even though we have been very successful in finding these kids and young adults heart surgeons and medical centers at other locations in the United States, it is very hard to do so. And Haitians lives are risked.  Other medical centers view these kids as OSF’s responsibility–which they are.

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org