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Nova Scotia’s only Catholic hospital will soon no longer have a religious sponsor.<\/p>\n
St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish, N.S., was founded by the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Martha in 1906. On Sept. 30, 2026, the congregation will conclude its role as sponsor and the province will not be seeking another sponsor.<\/p>\n
“When the current agreement concludes, the services and policies at St. Martha’s will more closely align with all other hospitals across Nova Scotia,” the Department of Health and Wellness said in a news release Friday.<\/p>\n
St. Martha’s is a publicly funded health-care facility, but because of its religious connections it did not permit procedures like abortion or medically assisted dying.<\/a> The hospital had been previously exempt under a 1996 agreement with the Catholic order that gave control of the facility to the province. In 2019, the hospital changed its policy<\/a> to allow medically assisted dying services. <\/p>\n The province said the Sisters built a legacy that “shaped healthcare in Antigonish, surrounding community and across the province.”<\/p>\n “The Sisters\u2019 stewardship, service and leadership in healthcare includes much more than the delivery of exemplary care; it has also contributed to the education and preparation of thousands of healthcare professionals including nurses, lab technicians and X-ray technicians,” the news release said.<\/p>\n The province said the Sisters’ 120 years of service and stewardship “have had an immeasurable impact on healthcare and are deeply rooted and felt throughout the community.”<\/p>\n MORE TOP STORIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-317999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}