'Stealth euthanasia'？ Catholic nursing home accused of killing a nun
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Summary
Sister Dede Byrne is a former soldier, a nun, and a surgeon, and she is a massive pro-life activist. She doesn t fool around. And so when this happened to her friend, a friend of her for 35 years, she couldn t take it lying down. She couldn't save her. But she is telling the story of this travesty, and trying to make it stop all over the United States.
Transcript
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In comes a nurse, and she introduces herself to be the hospice nurse.
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I said, what's going on with sister? There's something wrong.
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Has she had a stroke? She said, oh, no, no, we're helping her transition.
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It was like electricity shooting through my body.
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That's like the code word for we're killing her.
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What if I told you that in a nursing home called Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
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run by a Catholic health association in the United States,
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because doctors are permitted to deny food and fluids to patients
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and also to sedate them, even against their will.
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And that's exactly what happened in 2022 to a nun, to a sister.
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And this sister, against her will, was denied food, fluids, and sedated to death.
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Now, this happens so much in the United States right now,
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But this sister, this religious, this in common parlance nun,
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And that sister is a great pro-life advocate who has fought for life for a long, long time.
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Sister Dede Byrne, you will all recall from 2020,
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speaking at the Republican National Convention at the invitation of the Trump White House.
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But she is a former soldier and a sister and also a surgeon.
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and trying to make it stop all over the United States.
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Stay tuned for this interview with Sister Dede Byrne.
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Thanks to My Legacy Will, an online platform free of charge,
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Let's begin as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
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This was all during the COVID period of time, sort of tail end of it.
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Sister, Philip Marie Burley, who was a very close friend for 35 years.
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I met her when I was stationed in Korea as a younger doctor.
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She did international retreat work and was well-loved by many.
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She ended up in the hospital for an infection of the chest.
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And they put her in a nursing home, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in St. Charles, Missouri.
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Soon thereafter, she was scheduled to have surgery.
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So another friend who actually beats me in the, I know, Sister Philip Marie, the longest club,
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Doren and I decided we were going to fly out and be at her bedside when she was going to have this
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surgery that Sister felt she was going to have for her lower extremities.
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When we arrived, she was basically in a coma for about two days.
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She had a feeding tube in, which I didn't know about.
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And I couldn't see her, of course, in the 2021 period because that was the COVID period.
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So when we were there at her bedside, in comes a nurse and she introduces herself to me,
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She said, oh, no, no, we're helping her transition.
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And I said, then all of a sudden, it was like electricity shooting through my body.
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That's like the code word for we're killing her.
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And I said, now, remind you, mind you, this is January of 2022.
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Just to tell you quickly, she died April 4th of 2022.
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And she always wanted to come to our convent and spend her last days there.
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And I said, but I don't think she has last days.
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And this was not a classic hospice setting where they like you to loved ones to be at the bedside.
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When I saw the writing on the wall, Dorenda and I, and she finally woke up.
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So I said, well, you have to say no to narcotics.
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So the four times that I went to visit her, because my own religious sister, the beloved
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So I had to go back and forth, plus the work, I'd still operate.
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Two of the four times, they had clamped her feedings.
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And I had to go marching down there and said, what's going on?
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So when I saw the writing on the wall in January, I got on her phone.
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And I text everybody that sister had communicated with.
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We had people from Mexico, from California, Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, D.C., just
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A day didn't go by from January to April that someone was not at her bedside, and we were
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complaining to the adult care because their room was a mess.
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So it became a battle all of a sudden, especially toward the end.
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At one point, and sister had a power of attorney that was one of her sisters in her community
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Sister had wanted me to be her power of attorney along with her brother.
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But because she was a religious sister, she was basically stated, no, you cannot have who
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When I was flying out for one of the visits, I asked a friend who was at her bedside, can you
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please set up and ask the mother general and this power of attorney if I can talk to them?
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A friend of mine, Tricia Palumbo, who was a love sister very much, purchased a ground
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ambulance from St. Charles, Missouri to Washington, D.C., $6,000 to carefully bring her to us.
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Sister had a chronic illness, not a terminal illness, so she had Crest syndrome, which affected
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the vessels and whatnot, but her mind was very alert.
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In January 22, they deemed her incompetent, had two doctors deemed her incompetent, but
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you'll see by the video footage, she's not incompetent.
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They probably tested her while they had over-sedated her, and they started to malnourish her and
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We had Janice Clark, who's a Canadian-American.
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She's a powerful street sidewalk counselor, just war hero.
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These people don't know we have this, and I don't care that they know now because our
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documentary is going to be out in November 16th of this year in St. Louis.
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But on April 1st, she said, Sister, text me, because they said at 12 o'clock, I cannot come
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And she goes, and Sister, they've stopped her two feedings.
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Her oxygen is soft, and she's not getting anything.
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She cannot drink by mouth because of her condition.
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I forgot to mention, when I first arrived in January of 2022, her mouth was in terrible
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I had to close the door, and Doretta and I would clean her mouth out, and she would
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I mean, there was such a poor care for this human being, and it just brought so much anger.
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And so I was just praying that we could get her to Washington, where people live with,
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We pray twice a day, at least before the Blessed Sacrament.
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She spent a lot of time here and knew what spiritual strength we get from here, our convent.
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I text my brother, Bishop Bill Byrne, who took over Archbishop Rosansky's site in Springfield,
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My brother knew Sister before he even entered the priesthood, and Sister connected him with
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So he became the spiritual director for the early part of him becoming a priest.
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Anyhow, Billy texts Archbishop Rosansky, and Rosansky's message to him, and mind you, about
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20 of us called the chancery without any response, because we felt that if he interceded, at least
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And his message to my brother was, sorry, Bill, this is between Sister and her community.
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We had a priest come in who he wasn't even allowed to go in, and he had to force himself
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This is a priest who says, who is the priest for that facility, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
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He finally got in, and he said, I want to anoint her.
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And he texted me that Sunday and said, Sister, I just want to tell you, she's still breathing,
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And then on the 4th of April, on that Monday, I got a message from friends that she had
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Her community did not let any of us know, and they had a very quiet, hidden funeral for
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And Sister, initially, we got the ambulance because Sister, we had permission from the
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She wasn't happy, but if Sister, that's where she wanted to go, because Sister made many phone
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Mother Angelica is wonderful, but that's her only, she gets periodic communion.
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And mind you, one day when Sister Doranda and I were together, I think, a Eucharistic minister
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came in, I believe she was a sister, gave Sister the precious blood in her mouth, and then
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took the syringe and threw it in the trash can.
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And so, I mean, when the sister walked away, took it out of the trash can, put it in the
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And the next morning at Mass, I asked Father, I said, Father, what do I do with this?
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And this is like the nefarious evil that was, I believe, surrounding her.
00:12:05.240
She basically, like I think Michael Hitchborn, because I spoke to him earlier on, he said,
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Sister was initially given permission to come to us, but then they stopped.
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She didn't want to go and be, she wanted to go, but not, she didn't want to go under
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Well, I mean, for a lot of religious, particularly those serious about their vocations, they'd
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rather die, literally, and be killed than be disobedient.
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And did you record some of that so that you can show?
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Let's play a few of those clips, because I think that's one of the questions that first
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comes to people's minds is, how do you know she really wanted to live?
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How can you say this is euthanasia or against her will?
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In one week, Sister Philip Marie Burley will be dead.
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So it's difficult for a hospital to bambozoom you.
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One of the things they told you was that she was demented and therefore couldn't answer
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Do you have evidence to suggest to you as a medical doctor that she wasn't suffering dementia
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She could just, just by conversation, John Henry.
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And she had a very clear, she had a two hour discussion with a couple of lawyers, that pro-life
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So he's in New Mexico and he's closed down many abortionists.
00:14:32.740
And Mike had a two hour conversation because we had several people trying to help us get
00:14:41.360
He said clearly she, she was talking about the president and isn't any other.
00:14:45.460
Pope Pius XI said, men must look for the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.
00:14:52.080
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00:14:56.620
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00:15:00.440
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00:15:09.880
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00:15:16.480
One of the things, sister, that you said was that we tried and tried to break her out.
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I can't tell you how weird that sounds because being myself in Canada, looking at America,
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the land of the free, the home of the brave, where freedom is supposed to be respected, there's
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a woman, forget that she's a nun right now, but there's a woman, an elderly woman who wants
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help, wants out of the hospital to go and be with her friends.
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And there's all sorts of friends of hers in there trying to get her help.
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And they're refusing to feed her at all or hydrate her.
00:16:00.580
And they keep her sedated so that she's going to die soon and eventually just kill her.
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But what you're saying is this is not an isolated case.
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I'll tell you, I did not have euthanasia on my radar until I lost sister.
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I was like a drunken sailor telling everybody about this story.
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And we want to make a documentary on it, which we're going to, we have now going to be shown
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People started to see me as like the euthanasia sister and even giving some talks on that.
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People started to call me about their loved one being in the hospital.
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You don't want your mother or your loved one to get further care, like IV fluids, chemotherapy,
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Or just simply get a fever worked up, which is one of the cases for a friend of mine whose
00:17:00.360
mother was, we gave, we got a week of time on this woman and the children got to be with
00:17:10.040
She did die a week later, but she had that precious week with her.
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I can tell you all sorts of stories, but I've also seen some sad stories where children
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have, this is two cases now where children have felt, you know, mom has got dementia and
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this enough is enough and let's just let her go.
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I mean, like my dear Maximilian Kolbe right here to start nine days in prison.
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They had to change it because she lived too long.
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So really, it's very important when you are, first of all, you know, to share that euthanasia,
00:17:54.200
Yes, it is illegal, but stealth euthanasia, doctors have a license to give those three
00:18:00.200
things that you mentioned, hydration, food, and over sedation.
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It's very important for you to be prepared when you die, to have someone who you know
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thinks like you, has the Catholic thinking cap of dying with, in the time that the Lord
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has called you so that you can have that precious moment.
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If you're suffering, yes, pain meds is important, but you don't have to over sedate.
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We took a friend in who had myeloma and the hospital was trying to euthanize her.
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We got her to our place and her children had precious time with her.
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She was able to write a will and she died two months later.
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She had worked with the Dominican friars here in Washington.
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So it was like a nonstop Dominican priest coming in every day, giving her anointing,
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And I remember sitting with Martha and saying, Martha, you know, I wish I could switch places
00:19:06.280
She said, sister, I wouldn't change this position in the world.
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She had her master's, she's a convert, she had her master's in theology at the Dominican
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So the three things I want to do is that euthanasia is real, that prepare, have the right people
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And including anointing, wear your brown scapula, the apostolic blessing.
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It's something that we Catholics can really, that sometimes separates us from other faiths
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because our Lord gave us this gift to be able to help those we love in purgatory or even
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our own children and grandchildren or spouse by offering up the suffering you have to be
00:20:04.100
able to bring your loved one closer to Christ because that's the name of the game.
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That's why I always say I'm not only a pro-life physician, I'm pro-eternal life and I want
00:20:14.700
everyone to come, but not everyone will if you reject our Lord.
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But so that last, that redemptive suffering is such a gift.
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Her family, I suppose, didn't like to see her having pain.
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And I think they probably wanted her to get out of this pain.
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She had such a huge, rich gift of spiritual strength.
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She gave retreats in Calcutta to Mother Teresa.
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She taught me a lot when I was in Korea in the late 1989.
00:21:01.620
And she said, now remember, Didi, you are Jesus's doctor.
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And we actually, when I was asked to medevac a patient back to the United States who was on a ventilator.
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And I quite honestly was just praying that I wouldn't kill her if the tube popped out.
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And Sister Philip Marie had her beloved hands in that.
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So she's now the white martyr, the tip of the arrow of this fight so that others won't have to go through what she went through.
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So they can actually experience that redemptive suffering that God has asked us to, you know, to be a part of him on that cross.
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I should mention there's organizations that help people to fight this kind of thing.
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I know Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is one such organization that I know very well.
00:22:10.780
One of the things you mentioned there in the preparation for death I think needs some explanation because I know it very well.
00:22:17.340
But most people don't explain to us what is the apostolic pardon.
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I understand that it's like the anointing of the sick.
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But it's that anointing that at the last moments of your life, a priest can pardon, remove all sins from the early times.
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It's almost like another baptism in one way, because when we get baptized, we're immaculate.
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And then, you know, our humanity, we go through and we have to confess.
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But it's a complete remission of all our sins and with the hopes of being eternally with our Lord.
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So our loved one can be feel we can feel more relieved or to be eternally with God.
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Do you have anything you want to add there, John?
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I mean, the thing, what I find so sad is that so many priests don't know about this.
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So they come and they give you the, you know, last rites.
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You know, and so it is one thing to check and to have a priest who does know about the apostolic pardon because it's huge grace.
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It's an opportunity for family members to provide for their loved ones who are dying in a way that is truly beautiful.
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One of the things is, yeah, be prepared, be ready for also with pro-life power of attorney, things like that.
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You want to ensure that those who are going to be looking after you in your final days are really the ones with your own interests at heart.
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You're the own Catholic faith and understanding of death at heart because it's very important decisions.
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And they need to be made before you enter into that situation.
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Your sister, Philip Marie, was in a different situation because her family, as it were, were also the religious order that had charge over her.
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So how can people find out more about this and the progress in the movie as well?
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As I said earlier, credosaintlouis.org is one way.
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Unfortunately, we've had a little bit of a block.
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The archbishop does not want us to present the movie in a Catholic institution.
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And that's why, John Henry, I got the news and I reached out to you right away to help us get the word out.
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And also, hopefully, to encourage Archbishop Rosansky to himself sort of rethink about this decision.
00:25:01.760
That's a good question, but I do believe that because it's a Catholic sister, it's an Ascension health care health system.
00:25:08.720
You know, there was a movie done a few years ago by Chuck Neff called Scandal.
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And you can get an access to that movie for free on the website, credosaintlouis.org.
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They follow a young girl who they discover she has a fetal anomaly in a Catholic institution in St. Louis.
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And she's referred to an abortion mill to abort.
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And it's basically a black eye to the health care system in St. Louis.
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It's like two black eyes now to Ascension health.
00:26:01.560
And I just believe that they just don't understand the concept of, you know, redemptive suffering or I don't know.
00:26:09.560
On your screens here below, you can see the contact information for Archbishop Rosansky.
00:26:15.640
Hopefully some of you will reach out to him and ask him to reconsider his decision.
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Even though it might give a black eye to a Catholic health association, Ascension health, they need to be called out for what they're doing anyway.
00:26:28.460
Anyway, so hopefully we can come to a full understanding of the practice of the church's actual teaching, which teaches that food and fluids can't be denied to anybody.
00:26:41.500
When these issues came forward, it's always been the teaching of the church, but it's just when the new medical methods come out, the church clarifies, no, you can't withdraw food and fluids.
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One quick thing, John Henry, sister also had a little website, S-I-S-T-E-R-B-U-R-L-E.com.
00:27:03.900
That's also another way you can access the documentary.
00:27:07.840
We will make this documentary, I'm not sure exactly how yet, but to the world to watch.
00:27:15.100
But then you can scroll down, and we're trying to get, for free, present some of sister's retreats and her works, one of which was the promotion of the Rosary and the Way of the Cross.
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I won't go through it now because it's fairly long, but you can click into that because she was into family healing, the family bloodline from many generations.
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So you can click into that and listen to her rosary.
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You will hear her voice, and you can access that for free as well.
00:27:44.540
And if you scroll down further, it's a little commercial break, but Bishop Strickland and I are going to be doing a pilgrimage to Guadalupe in June.
00:27:55.460
His sister, Philip Murray, and I used to go to the Holy Land all the time, and that's where she would advertise her pilgrimages.
00:28:02.980
So we're maintaining, keeping her memory alive by having that website, sisterburley.com.
00:28:10.280
And as you said, she is a white martyr for what's going on with youth in Asia, but she also is a martyr, you might say in a real sense, to the truth for life.
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So God bless you, sister, and thank you for bringing to us this story of Sister Burley.
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And let's pray that the truth comes out, and the church, especially those shepherds who are not being faithful with regard to life, come back before it's too late even for them.
00:28:56.100
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00:29:00.340
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