Hospital Divina Providencia--Where we'll work while we're in San Salvador

Mission and Vision

        To provide atention in Palliative Care to patients with Cancer and their Extended Family, which generally come from Hospital Nacional Rosales and the Institue of Cancer, who have no ability to pay and who suffer because of the pain. The institution is supported mainly of the Divine Providence and the Support of Benefactors. We are known for being the only ones to offer this service in El Salvador.

        To deepen and extend our services in response to patients with various incurable diseases, promising to be an institution with highly qualified staff in Palliative Care



Hospital Divinia Providencia



History of the Institution

        Hospital Divina Providencia is born from the original idea of Carmelite Missionary of Saint Theresa, Sister Luz Isabel Cuevas, who sought to offer a place to shelter patients from the Instituto del Cáncer (Cancer Institute) who would come from places far-off from San Salvador to receive radiotherapy and, because of their economical circumstances, couldn’t afford but to install and sleep in the streets rounded about the aforementioned institution’s building. Sister Luz’s intention is blessed by God’s Providence in the form of Mrs. Bertha Rivas de Albiñana, who, not only donated the Hospital’s land, but suggested the nun the establishment of a hospital that could effectively nurse cancer patients.
        Hospital Divina Providencia is born from the original idea of Carmelite Missionary of Saint Theresa, Sister Luz Isabel Cuevas, who sought to offer a place to shelter patients from the Instituto del Cáncer (Cancer Institute) who would come from places far-off from San Salvador to receive radiotherapy and, because of their economical circumstances, couldn’t afford but to install and sleep in the streets rounded about the aforementioned institution’s building. Sister Luz’s intention is blessed by God’s Providence in the form of Mrs. Bertha Rivas de Albiñana, who, not only donated the Hospital’s land, but suggested the nun the establishment of a hospital that could effectively nurse cancer patients.
        At first, right after its founding, the Hospital received abundant contributions and donations from various benefactors, which permitted the institution’s development even without governmental or ecclesial contribution. This “Golden Age” was translated into the construction of eight hospitalization areas, an independent area for the Hospital’s kitchen, laundry area and a chapel also consecrated to the Divine Providence, were holly Eucharist is daily celebrated.
        During the seventies and eighties, elected archbishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Óscar Arnulfo Romero finds himself sheltered by the nuns, establishing his house within the Carmelite community, staying close to the patients and fraternally living with the Sisters. His assassination the 24th of March of 1980 at the Hospital’s chapel provokes different reactions among the different sectors of society. For one part, the chapel and Monsignor Romero’s house become pilgrimage centres for a lot of people; but for others, his assassination and ideas became motives for stopping the help to the Hospital. Donations became scarce, and, at some points, patient attention became economically unsustainable. Since then, and during the first years of Salvadorian post-war, Hospital Divina Providencia found itself in an institutional lethargy.
        Since 1999, the Carmelite Missioners of Saint Theresa community begins a careful re-evaluation of the attention received by the patients in the Hospital, deciding to appoint Sister María Julia García as head of the cause and to hire a full-time physician. The Hospital’s path is again supported by the direction and reciprocal collaboration of a lay and a nun. Since then, different agreements of mutual cooperation have been signed with different institutions and pain relieving along with spiritual assistance become the Hospital’s daily concerns.
        Nowadays, Hospital Divina Providencia prepares to take on this millennium’s challenges looking at the horizon with its trust set in God Almighty, who has blessed the Hospital since its beginnings, who has walk with it through it difficulties, but who, above all, has blessed it with his Divine Providence, manifested in every good-hearted people that become sensible to the pain of others.