St. Mary's Catholic Home in Cherry Hill deserves to survive

Anne Rush is praying to stay at St. Mary's Catholic Home.

"It's the best place, other than heaven," says Rush, 95, who is upset about the Diocese of Camden's plan to sell the Cherry Hill facility where she has lived for seven years.

"We're praying to the Blessed Mother that [no one] buys it."

Residents, family members, employees, volunteers, benefactors, and members of South Jersey's Catholic community - where St. Mary's has been a beloved institution for generations - are worried as well.

The diocese announced in August that it would sell the Kresson Road complex but "ask that prospective buyers maintain the Catholic identity" and retain residents and employees.

Nevertheless, sale opponents have petitioned Camden Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan and are asking the Vatican to intervene. Citing a 2013 federal tax filing, they are skeptical about the diocese claim that St. Mary's is losing money.

And they are concerned that St. Mary's will inevitably change under new ownership, disrupting the already-fragile lives of 300 residents.

"It's my mother's home," says Nancy Gaddis, 59, a retired social worker who lives in Cherry Hill. "The diocese is acting like this is just a real estate transaction."

Gaddis and Cecilia Wyand of Yardley are the leaders of the St. Mary's Catholic Home Family Advisory Council, a group formed after the intention to sell was announced. It has a mailing list of 70.

"The sale is wrong," says Wyand, a retired business executive whose mother is a resident of the 215-bed nursing-home portion of St. Mary's. The Manor section offers apartments for an additional 100 people; one floor is home to a number of retired priests.

"Information [about the sale] is confusing. Residents and family members have not been invited in," says Wyand, who adds that selling to "a non-Catholic, for-profit company will fundamentally change [St. Mary's] mission."

Except for the Aug. 26 news release, which attributed a $6 million shortfall in diocesan nursing-home operations to "insufficient Medicaid reimbursement," the diocese has said nothing publicly about the plan.

Sullivan, who was installed as Camden's bishop in February 2013, has rarely spoken to mainstream media, except at special occasions or photo opportunities. Spokesman Peter Feuerherd declined to answer questions, instead referring me to the five-month-old news release.

The diocese also plans to sell Our Lady's Multicare Center in Pleasantville and the Bishop McCarthy residence in Vineland. It closed the Mater Dei nursing home in Newfield, Gloucester County, in 2012.

Martin B. Idler, executive director of the diocesan division of health services, has said the move to sell St Mary's and the two other facilities was not made lightly.

"None of these decisions is easy," Idler said in a series of e-mails that a resident's family member shared with me.

"The decision came after a period of 18 months in which we studied our options, discussed the situation with [an appointed] Blue Ribbon Committee . . . and we prayed.

"The gap between what Medicaid pays and what our costs are has grown to over $49 per day" per patient, Idler wrote, adding, "The financial future of the homes is bleak."

According to the news release, proceeds from the sale of the nursing homes will fund transformation and expansion of the diocesan health-care ministry to provide more home-based services for elderly people, as well as families.

But many residents of the nursing-home portion of St. Mary's require round-the-clock professional care. And family members note that many Manor as well as nursing-home residents chose to be at St. Mary's because of their faith.

The regular presence of clergy, including nuns from the nearby community of the Little Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, deepens the spiritual atmosphere, residents and their families say.

"It's not just a nursing home. It's a community," says Christina Farrell, 62, of Florence Township, whose mother has been at St. Mary's for eight years.

Farrell also wonders whether the relationships that employees and volunteers have developed with residents would continue under new ownership and management.

"We have no real assurances a buyer will do anything," says Bill Robins, 73, of Middletown, Del., whose brother-in-law has been "unbelievably happy" at St. Mary's for three years.

"The people in there are the ones who have supported the diocese their whole lives," Robins adds. "They're the people who built most of the churches in the diocese. After their families, the church came first."

In the news release, Bishop Sullivan said the diocese needed to be "creative" to carry out its ministry to the elderly, because "the current nursing home model cannot be sustained."

The diocese ought to use some of that creativity to save - rather than sell off - St. Mary's, an essential institution that for 75 years has meant so much to residents like Anne Rush and their families.

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