St. Francis Medical Center of Monroe, La., is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year with awards banquets, commemorative events, a feast day, centennial Mass, pet blessing and other activities. St. Francis was the first hospital opened by the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady, the foundresses of the four Louisiana facilities that now make up the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System of Baton Rouge, La.
Originally, the six Franciscan sisters who arrived from Calais, France, in 1911 had planned to open a hospital in Pineville, La.; but the funding for that facility fell through, according to information on a centennial website St. Francis has created. After plans dissipated in Pineville, the sisters learned that a priest had secured land and a $20,000 funding commitment for a sanitarium in Monroe. The sisters traveled there and helped to develop the St. Francis Sanitarium. The hospital opened July 22, 1913, in a three-story, red brick building with 75 patient beds.
After a century of expansion, St. Francis Medical Center now is a 550-bed hospital that bills itself as Northeast Louisiana's largest health care provider.
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