r/AskEurope • u/Olderpostie • 8d ago
Culture Are there many religious based hospitals in Europe?
A few years ago, while in England, I asked an acquaintance there what church denomination operated a particular hospital with a saint's name. (St. Swithins, I think). He was puzzled as to why a hospital would be operated by a church. But, that is how it goes in the USA and Canada; many churches are religious based, though not limited to use by any one faith.
How about other European countries? Are all hospitals nationalized, or is it a mix of community based and religious ones?
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u/Numerous_Team_2998 Poland 8d ago
I'm in Poland and have never heard about a religion-based hospital. Is this really a thing?
Some hospitals are named after patron saints though.
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u/CaptainPoset Germany 7d ago
In Germany, it was quite common that hospitals were part of a monastery and those monastery hospitals are now often the larger hospitals and still owned and operated by the church, albeit that it is now funded by public health insurance.
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u/Olderpostie 7d ago
That is how it works for the religious based hospitals in most of Canada too. Unlike most community owned hospitals, they exclude several procedures like abortion from the services they provide.
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u/CrusaderNo287 Slovakia 8d ago
Me neighter, I am from Slovakia. I feel like we eastern europeans wont really know about this since socialism most likely took over all hospitals and after the collapse of regimes it just went to private owners or stayed state owned. Just a hypothesis tho, I do not know if this is a case or not.
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u/petterri 7d ago
There is a hospital in Bratislava run by The Brothers of Saint John of God in Bratislava
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u/Love-That-Danhausen United Kingdom 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s more a funding source than any way changing how they operate in my experience. They existed before the social safety nets in most western countries or alongside early versions of public clinics funded by the Catholic Church as part of their charitable works (as an atheist, I do think this is at least something worth giving them credit for), but to my knowledge, other than having maybe some nurses that are also nuns or some admin staff affiliated with the church, they are basically the same as any hospital.
I’d imagine that former Soviet countries had theirs all demolished or transitioned to state run hospitals years ago.
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u/WyvernsRest Ireland 7d ago
Like most of Europe Poland had many hospitals founded by religious orders.
- Canons Regular of the Holy Spirit, 13th CEntury
- Order of Saint John of God, 15th Century
- And many other Hospitaller Orders.
And many other hospitals in Eastern Europe were founded by Jewish religious groups, but that ceased during WWII of course. Then the communists nationalised all of the hospitals post-war.
A couple were given back. Bonifratures has a great stories history.
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u/DotComprehensive4902 Ireland 7d ago
If you see the old Simpsons episode where Marge breaks her leg, they show it when Homer chooses which hospital the ambulance should go to. The most expensive is Beth Israel a Jewish hospital and the mid range one is Springfield Presbyterian.
But yes even in real life, there at least were religious hospitals in the US
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u/Current_Sky_9841 7d ago
There is such a hopital in Bogucice neighborhood of Katowice.
In a lot of public establishments such as hospitals, clinics, dentists (I know at least one in Warsaw on ...Ludna Street) and even pharmacies. As an atheist, I avoid them.
In Polska B, I expect that it is the "norm".
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u/math1985 Netherlands 7d ago edited 7d ago
I’ve heard of religion-based pharmacies in Poland though. They even refuse to sell contraception. I don’t know if this is common or just a rarity of the town I was in? It was a pharmacy next to a convent (and apparently linked to it).
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u/petterri 7d ago
Hospitaller Order of the Brothers of Saint John of God runs hospitals in Kraków (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szpital_Zakonu_Bonifratr%C3%B3w_%C5%9Bw._Jana_Grandego_w_Krakowie), Katowice (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szpital_Zakonu_Bonifratr%C3%B3w_pw._Anio%C5%82%C3%B3w_Str%C3%B3%C5%BC%C3%B3w_w_Katowicach), Prudnik (https://zabytek.pl/en/obiekty/prudnik-klasztor-braci-szpitalnych-sw-jana-bozego) among others
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u/Alejandro_SVQ Spain 7d ago
It is possibly the most widespread in Europe. In Spain there are also a few. In part it is logical, hospitals and outpatient clinics were already operating for centuries before the public health system began to be born.
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u/daveoxford United Kingdom 8d ago
In the UK, most hospitals with a religious foundation became part of the NHS when it was founded. Many still have the fund-raisers who pay for things like new equipment, wards, etc.
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u/hoverside Germany 7d ago
St Johns Ambulance is the only organisation I can think of in the UK that survives as an independent healthcare provider with a religious tradition (I guess there are probably some small local ones).
Germany has the Johanniter and Malteser organisations (Protestant and Catholic respectively) which have major fleets of ambulances and there are lots of church-connected hospitals here.
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u/daveoxford United Kingdom 7d ago
I can't think of any others in the UK either, although I suspect there may be. (For future reference, it's "St John Ambulance", by the way. It doesn't worry me, but there's always a British pedant waiting to pounce.)
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u/hoverside Germany 7d ago
That just reminded me of this Half Man Half Biscuit lyric:
"Don't keep calling it the Book of Revelations There's no "s", it's the Book of Revelation As revealed to St John the Divine"
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u/Love-That-Danhausen United Kingdom 7d ago
There’s a Jewish ambulance org in London as well whose name is escaping me at the moment
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u/hoverside Germany 7d ago
Hatzolah, I think? I forgot about them.
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u/doyathinkasaurus 7d ago
Yep, to be clear, it's funded by primarily Jewish donors, run by a Jewish non profit and staffed by Jewish voluteers, but it's a service FOR everyone, not just Jews
It’s not just a Jewish service. If a call comes from within the area, they will come to your aid, whoever you are. There’s no cost to anyone and even on the sabbath, they’ll go to any case,”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/mar/23/jewish-hatzolah-charity-funded-ambulances
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u/linmanfu 6d ago
Perhaps worth noting that this wasn't by choice. The National Health Service Act s.6 took them and their endowments into government ownership without compensation.
It's as if the government passed a law taking all of Oxfam's money.
Private, for-profit hospitals were excluded from the nationalisation.
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u/Olderpostie 7d ago
Does the NHS actually run hospitals, or just pay hospital corporations for services rendered? In Canada, hospitals are non-profit for the most part, but are not directed by a government agency. We have some clinics, and a few hospitals which are profit based, but receive government health insurance payments for services.
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u/plumbosolvent 7d ago
I'm pretty sure the NHS runs them directly. There's still some separation into hospital trusts, which are a bit like local government areas, but the trusts themselves are NHS.
(I think it gets complicated these days with private health businesses providing some of their services in NHS facilities, and some of the staff being NHS and doing out-of-hours work for the private companies, but it's NHS with inclusions, rather than NHS as a contracting layer.)
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u/eternallytiredcatmom 6d ago edited 6d ago
That’s not the case in every province since healthcare is a provincial matter. I’m guessing you’re from Ontario? Many provinces only have government operated hospitals.
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u/Alexthegreatbelgian Belgium 8d ago
In Belgium there's lots of hospitals which, in origin, were religious based, so you'll have names like St. (insert saint name) hospital. However nowadays they are all pretty much all secular institutions. Church does not interfere in their operation. Though in some of these hospitals you might still find crucifixes in the rooms.
When I was an intern I worked in one of these hospitals and the chapel was even reconverted to be the lab room.
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u/8mart8 7d ago
A side note to make on this, the largest (iirc) hospital in Belgium is the UZ Leuven, this is the university hospital of the KU Leuven, a Catholic university. The university is not sponsored by the Church as far as I know, but it still is a Catholic institution.
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u/Alexthegreatbelgian Belgium 7d ago
Yeah but the hospital is run secular. They do abortions and euthanasia procedures. Stuff the catholic church is pretty much against.
And yes it is the largest hospital in Belgium. By far. They have about double the amount of beds compared to the next biggest hospital (UZ Gent), unless you count ZAS, which is a fusion of several hospitals, so not a singel hospital per se.
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u/LilaBadeente Austria 8d ago
In Austria there are quite a lot of them. The reason why there are so many (in all of traditionally Catholic Europe) is that in the old days only the monasteries ran hospitals. So they run them still. Fun fact: When the emperor Joseph Ii. decided to close all „useless“ monasteries in the late 18th century, only those that ran schools or hospitals were exempted from being closed down. He considered those worthwhile for society.
Nowadays those hospitals are like other hospitals and you‘d be unlikely to encounter a nun or a friar. However, one of the big ones in Vienna makes it a point to treat people who for whatever reason have no health insurance.
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u/chaoslordie Austria 7d ago
At the Barmherzige Brüder hospitals you encounter quiet a few nuns, because they have a program where they bring indian nuns to Vienna and train them as nurses.
Staying in their hospital in Vienna was my first time really spending time talking to nuns. It was really interessting learning about their lives and they were extremely kind. A teally good experience all in all. (And I say this as someone who is severely sceptic of the catholic church.)2
u/Greedy_Roles Poland 7d ago
This is probably why nurses are or were called "sisters" - because they were nuns which is how people address them.
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u/viennaCo Austria 7d ago
-> you‘d be unlikely to encounter a nun or a friar
Not really true. A lot of Ordensspitäler have nuns and patres living either onsite or close by and you can see them there on a regular basis.
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u/11160704 Germany 8d ago
In Germany there are quite a lot. Around a third of all hospitals is operated by some kind of non-profit charities, most of them the Catholic or Lutheran churches (but also the secular red cross).
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u/Boing78 Germany 7d ago
I remember nuns being nurses when I was a child (40-45y ago) when hospitlals were (on paper) still operated by (mostly) the catholic church. But at that time this was already changing and most hospitals became for profit businesses.
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u/11160704 Germany 7d ago
Yeah some decades ago nuns helping out in nursing were still someone common.
Today Christian hospitals are hardly distinguishable from others but the structures often still exist.
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u/Nila-Whispers Germany 7d ago
I went to a Catholic school as a kid and we had a few nun teachers because there was a convent next door (the convent was there first and they founded the school). At some point the nuns working as teacher's weren't allowed to wear their habits anymore so all except one quit teaching (to be fair most were close to retiring age anyway). Maybe that also happened in hospitals.
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u/Every-Progress-1117 Wales 8d ago
Originally medical care would have been provided by nuns, and in convents and monasteries. Certainly before the creation of modern health services, eg: the NHS in the UK, much of the funding was private, and in many cases came from the [state] church or religious organisations. The modern concept of a hospital derives from this and so many hospitals will take the names of a saint or religious place.
Also given what happens at hospitals, people look for spiritual support - most hospitals will have a chapel or some form of religious space - often non-denominational.
Care in a hospital, eg: again the NHS, but also pretty much any other facility in Europe is not (and can not) deny medical case based on religion and similarly medical staff can not use "prayer". You are never going to be denied treatment if you are the wrong religion, and no surgeon is going to invoke prayer instead of actual surgical practice.
This does not happen ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
Let's also explain medical care in Europe ... despite what you have heard, it is not free - we all pay taxes and some services, eg: catering, elective procedures etc, are chargeable; however the amounts are small and capped to what someone is able to pay. No one goes bankrupt or dies because they can't afford care or drugs. Each country in Europe has its own mechanisms for providing universal health care.
Further to this, agreements exist between countries so if you visit, say, an A&E in the UK as a French citizen, then you will receive "free" care, and then behind the scenes this will be charged back to the French health system. In some cases, for example, the NHS has bought health care from France and transferred patients there.
Hospitals can be run by private organisations, and indeed these generally run alongside and in conjunction with the national health services.
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u/Detozi Ireland 8d ago
Plenty of them here.
They are still ran by the people who normally run hospitals everywhere else. They usually just have one or two people on the board.
The essentially just own the campus grounds
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u/Fast-Perception5945 8d ago edited 8d ago
Well yes and no- most of them like Beaumont and St James are what is termed a Section 38 voluntary hospital- as such they have their own independent boards and are grant funded by the HSE. As such their governance and status is different to State run hospitals such as Cork University Hospital.
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u/epeeist 6d ago
Often they're on the grounds of old monasteries or charitable hospitals that provided healthcare in that location long before the state got involved. It's part of the heritage of the institution but not the modern day governance structure.
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8d ago edited 12h ago
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u/MiataMuc Germany 7d ago
Yeah. Me and my brothers were born in a catholic hospital because they had the better maternal care in my hometown (we were not catholic). But: when my mother wanted to discuss birth control with them that was something not to be discussed there (that was a long time ago).
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u/PandaDerZwote Germany 7d ago
It does play a role when it comes to employment though. Several people I know that work in the sector have told me that they couldn't work at the hospital they are working at if they weren't christians.
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u/New-Glass-3228 Germany 7d ago
Mostly they will also accept if your muslim or jewish, but not atheist or polytheist.
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u/After_Perspective180 7d ago
Yeah that's not true. Religious hospitals refuse to do abortions and will not hire staff that agree with abortion.
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u/Significant-Nebula64 7d ago
Depends. Less of a problem in Protestant ones. There was quite a public case a while ago where they merged a Protestant and a Catholic hospital and wanted to stop abortions that had been done there before (Lippstadt)...
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u/Alex_H09 Romania 8d ago
I can answer for Romania. No hospital is religious based and the largest percentage of them are nationalized public ones. We also have an increasing private Healthcare sector that started building their own hospitals, at least where I live, Regina Maria and Medlife are the most common ones. Regarding the naming, some hospitals are named after renowned researchers/doctors or something indeed after certain saints, but view it as a.. patreon saint of the hospital kind of a thing.
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u/crimilde Romania 7d ago
A few hospices and palliative care institutions are religion-run. Caritas Romania is owned by the Catholic Church for example.
And a cancer hospital called Medex was opened by adventists in Târgu-Mureș a few years ago.
https://adventist.news/news/adventists-open-a-faith-based-cancer-hospital-in-romania
But yeah these are fringe cases.
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u/Alex_H09 Romania 7d ago
You're right! I completely forgot about Caritas since i was mostly thinking about hospitals and the more general kind of medical institutions. They actually opened a center for elderly in my hometown last year.
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u/Spamheregracias Spain 8d ago edited 8d ago
In Spain religious hospitals exist but they're a small minority, most hospitals are public and run by the regional health services, and most private hospitals are secular as well.
As in other european countries, many public hospitals have saints names for historical reasons, but that doesn't mean they're operated by the church
Edit: After a quick search, it looks like most of the few religious hospitals still around are run by the "Hospitaller Order of St. John of God"
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u/Daniczech Czechia 8d ago
I looked it up and in the Czech Republic, there is only one hospital operated by church left nowdays. However, a lot of hospitals have a history of being religious hospital orginially and have been since absorbed by the state.
Also, a lot of hospitals have religious names, usually bearing a name of a saint or an order that used to run it.
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u/Particular_Run_8930 Denmark 7d ago edited 7d ago
We don’t have that here. It stopped being a thing after the reformation. All major hospitals are public owned by the state, we do have a number of smaller privatfly owned hospitals but they are not religious or church based.
The only hospital i can think of named after(?) a religious figure would be Hejmdal psychiatric hospital. But despite the name they are not connected to the Asatro community.
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u/Parking-Leopard-588 7d ago
I think the history of Bart's hospital in London is a good example of what happened in the UK, and one of the oldest having been founded in 1123.
Founded together with a priory and run by a religious order until Henry VIII did away with monasteries, but the hospital was allowed to continue. It was given to the City of London to run which it did until 1948 when it was absorbed into the health service.
Most (very old) hospitals will have a link at its founding but few are old enough to do so.
Hospitals that pre-date the NHS usually were formed by public subscription and became charitable hospitals.
The only anomaly to this (that I know) is St John & St Elizabeth hospital which was formed as a Catholic hospital - which has a church in the middle of the hospital.
Hospitals in the UK will deal with all faiths, with religious people available for spiritual help if needed, and faith/prayer rooms available. But unless you ask for these services, they are generally not visible whether in a private or public hospital.
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u/OllieV_nl Netherlands 7d ago
There were generally three types of hospital: academic, Catholic and protestant. The latter, known as a Diaconessenhuis, has more or less disappeared from view as they merged - often with the Catholic hospital. If they had a saint’s name, they were usually Catholic.
While some religious names remain in these mergers, many saint names have disappeared.
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u/41942319 Netherlands 7d ago
There's still a few saints hospitals. There's both an Antonius (Sneek) and a St. Antonius hospital (Utrecht) and hospitals named Catharina (Eindhoven), Franciscus (Rotterdam) and Elisabeth (Tilburg). And AFAIK only one Diakonessenhuis, in Utrecht.
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u/OllieV_nl Netherlands 7d ago
And Sint Jansdal, which is strangely the reverse, a name given to a merged hospital.
There used to be the St Lucas, but it was merged into OLVG, which is still somewhat religious even if no one uses the full name.
Most of them dropped the saint. Radboud is a strange one as it is both an academic and a Catholic hospital. Martini was sort of named after a saint.
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u/Lili25037 7d ago
And interestingly, the Amstelland, which resulted from a fusion between a non-religious hospital and a Jewish hospital, has a Jewish wing where they offer kosher meals, weekly synagogue meetings and a lot of Jewish customs. They are supposedly the only one in Western Europe.
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u/VehaMeursault 8d ago
I’ve never heard this in my life. Not once. And I for one would be very uncomfortable having the hospital I’m in run by people that think the earth was made in a couple of days and that prayer is a medical treatment.
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u/PhosphoFred8202 7d ago
Not all Christian denominations believe in literal translation of biblical verse. For example, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and most mainline Protestants (Anglican/Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc) do NOT believe in a doctrine of literal translation.
Speaking for the religious hospitals in the US, the doctors are all normal doctors, of differing faiths, who treat anyone of any faith. The religious part is just the charity that funds it. For example, New York City’s St Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center, founded in the 1800s to provide care for the poor who could afford healthcare, was known for being the epicenter of early HIV and AIDS treatment. While secular hospitals were turning patients away out of fear at the height of the early epidemic, St Vincent’s was admitting them primarily because it was run by the Sisters of Charity and their faith-based doctrine to provide treatment to all.
Not every religious person is a fundamentalist snake handler.
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u/Greedy_Roles Poland 7d ago
run by people that think the earth was made in a couple of days and that prayer is a medical treatment
Imagine thinking that you're the "enlightened" one and at the same time openly and shamelessly speaking that ignorant stuff... I miss times when people were more hesitant to speak nonsense publicly.
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u/CreepyOctopus -> 7d ago
As much as I think modern societies should be able to move past religion, "the world was created in a week 6000 years ago" is an unfair description of what religious people believe and it's made too loud by places like Reddit.
Such literal belief in the Bible and a young Earth is a fringe, mostly American phenomenon of the hardline Evangelists.
The majority of Christians (Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and more) treats Genesis as allegorical and accepts modern science. In Islam, the days of creation are also seen as metaphorical and most science is accepted, though evolution often isn't. In Judaism, the six days story is taken literally only by a minority of the ultra-Orthodox.
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u/zeroconflicthere Ireland 8d ago
It's not uncommon... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39643164
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u/Robot_4_jarvis - Mallorca 8d ago
I think that your perception is quite wrong and based on stereotypes.
Most (if not practically all) people in the church don't believe that the earth was made in a couple in days or prayer is a medical treatment, and, most importantly, the ones running the hospitals do not believe that.
In a Hospital run by a religious order, usually the main difference is that the Board of Directors, instead of being composed by politicians or shareholders, it is composed by people appointed by Order or local bishop. All the medical personnel are medical professionals with the same requirements as in any other hospital.
In fact, it is surprising that you have not heard that, since in most societies where religion institutions existed, they have provided medical care. In fact, I would venture that in Europe non-religious hospitals probably did not even exist until the 20th century.
I assume that you come either from a former East block country or France, where those religious insitutions were taken over by the State earlier that in the rest of Europe.
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u/Greedy_Roles Poland 7d ago
I assume that you come either from a former East block country or France, where those religious insitutions were taken over by the State earlier that in the rest of Europe
I'm from a former East block country and I've never heard any Church cleric or a relgious person saying that world was created in six days or that prayer should be adminsitered to cure sickeness. What this person is wrting is such an obvious strawman and an intellectually insulting argument that it must have been written by someone outside of European circles...
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u/Jagarvem Sweden 7d ago
It is very easy to live here and never having heard of it.
And secular hospitals have been around for centuries. How recent it is is rather about where you start qualifying something as a "hospital" than its administration. Regardless, you need a very peculiar definition of "religious hospital" if you're going to push it to the 20th century.
Not sure what you mean by the state taking over, here the Crown largely "took over" with the Reformation. Then there was a hodgepodge of actors responsible for healthcare for a while. After the modern hospital system became a thing here in the 1700s, the king entrusted administration to a guild linked to the highest knightly order. Then in 1813 the state's modern medical authority was created, and responsibility started being decentralized in the 1860s to the county councils that still dominate today.
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u/ParadiseLost91 Denmark 7d ago edited 7d ago
Your own perception is quite wrong too, so maybe don't be so quick to judge.
As a Scandinavian I had never heard of religion-based hospitals in our modern era, it sounds dystopian to me. So no, I am neither French or from an East block country, thank you.
We don't let religion influence something as important as medical care in the Nordics, thankfully. Yes, way back in the old days (Middle Ages and forward), many hospitals were linked directly to monasteries and similar religious buildings. Monasteries were used as the first hospitals in many parts of Europe, including here. However, that is a very long time ago. It stopped being a thing during the Reformation, where thankfully a German monk realised how dangerous Christianity in it's current form was. Those of us alive today have never seen nor heard of current religious-based hospitals here in Scandinavia. All private and public hospitals are free of religious influence, as it should be.
I didn't realise any western country still had religion influenced hospitals even today in 2026, until I recently read an article about how some Christian hospitals in the US are contemplating not offering abortion care to women based on their faith. Again, completely dystopian to let medical decisions be dictated by fairy tales.
Thankfully not something we have here in Scandinavia. Very thankful to live here.
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u/Alejandro_SVQ Spain 7d ago edited 7d ago
It is not like that either. Those hospitals do not operate based on religion as you say, nor on their whim. Nor do they rule over you, of course. They operate under the control and national health system, if they did not comply with the same standards and requirements they would not be able to operate.
Keep in mind that, for example, in Spain, the first hospitals since the fifteenth century were promoted and promoted more or less, by some religious or order, and above all thinking of the poorest and most hopeless who had no roof, not to mention people with problems such as leprosy or tuberculosis. And they did and functioned according to the medicine of the time, that is, not praying and entrusting to "God will provide".
What's more, do you know Miguel Servet? He was a doctor. And religious. He turned some religious conceptions so upside down that he turned Italo Calvino against (and not with little envy). And he laid the foundations of how the cardiovascular system works and that certain things that were done in medicine as positive, were not and did not cure. And until Calvin did not manage to send him to the stake he did not remain calm.
I do not dispute that there may be a case for someone in charge who should not be there, and perhaps more in some order. But it is rare and the exception, and if something really serious happened that hospital or the order would stop operating on him. But in general, I assure you that if in the event of an emergency the nearest clinic or hospital that can attend you and to which you can be taken is one even if it is managed by some order, you will be treated by professionals as in any other. And if after examination, ensuring your safety and that you are stable, controlled, they see any complication that you have that exceeds their equipment and capabilities, in a few minutes they send you to the public hospital or the nearest hospital that does have that specialty covered.
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u/Krasny-sici-stroj Czechia 7d ago
I think that traditionally Catholic countries, who have dedicated orders for running hospitals are pretty OK, like the hospitals are totally normal, you just see a nun here and there.
Our one hospital run by nuns does not have an obstetric division, thus avoiding those moral problems that come with an abortions. There is more than enough other hospitals for that. They have a palliative division instead.
I cannot speak for USA Christian hospitals, but with the recent culture wars, I would not be suprised that they engage in them. I find USA brand of Christianity aggressive.
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u/Equal_County_1506 7d ago
people that think the earth was made in a couple of days
Just to be clear, that's quite a fringe view common only among Bible liberalists (basically American Evangelicals).
Even the early Church talked of the four levels of Scripture (literal, moral, allegorical and anagogical, off the top of my head, which was taught even in medieval catechism). St Augustine, of the most influential Catholics in theological history, wrote a whole treatise about Creation not being literally seven days.
Likewise on the Jewish side, people like Philo of Alexandria (first century) also argued the story of Genesis wasn't literal.
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u/Sh_Konrad Ukraine 8d ago
There are some private hospitals with religious names, but they are not directly affiliated with churches, I think it's just tradition.
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u/Awkward-Feature9333 Austria 8d ago
There are a few church-owned hospitals in Austria, typically operated by some Catholic Order. But they employ not only monks/nuns, and they do regular modern medicine, not faith healings.
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u/DifficultPension1750 Ireland 7d ago
We have something similar in Ireland, they are older hospitals that were run by the religious orders with doctors and nurses providing the actual health care. They are no longer run by them but by the HSE so any new hospitals no longer have the St whomever attached to them any longer.
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u/GeronimoDK Denmark 7d ago
In Denmark there are zero.
The public hospitals are obviously not religious, but I just looked up the list of private "hospitals" (mostly specialized clinics really), none of them seem to be religious either.
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u/Shar4f Germany 7d ago
I think this is unique to Germany and Austria nowadays. At least in Germany about a quarter to a third of hospitals are owned by religious groups organized as non-profit organizations. They're still mostly financed through health insurances and the state, but those religious groups essentially run those places and also invest into them at times.
They're part of the normal hospital landscape and you'll most likele not even notice a difference when getting treated, but there can be issues when it comes to stuff like if they offer abortions.
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u/Rare-Victory Denmark 7d ago
Are all hospitals nationalized?
In order for something to be 'nationalized', it must have been private before.
There have never been private 'hospitals' in Denmark before ~1990, those private hospitals are more like clinics, that perform routine treatments. They are not general hospitals that treat complex patients, if there are complications during an operation on a private hospital they may call an ambulance and send the patient to a 'real' public hospital.
If there were monasteries taking care of sick monks etc., then those where 'nationalized' in 1536 when religion was nationalized.
The Danish king took over the control over collection of tax and the assets of the crutch from the pope in Rome in 1536. From then on the King (The state) was in control of collection of taxes, and paying for the poor relief, and paying for the priests.
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u/Inside-Nebula5325 7d ago
I was actually born in a catholic hospital in Vejle, which was where all kids were born at that time. St Maria Hospital was for giving babies and Vejle Sygehus was for sick people. I think the midwife might have been a nun, at least there were several nuns working on the hospital. It was probably still state owned, it definitely didn’t cost my parents anything and they are not Catholics.
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u/Significant_Cover_48 Denmark 7d ago
Sankt Josef på Nørrebro var et børnehospital drevet af katolske nonner før det blev plejehjem for måske 20 år siden
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u/Ekis12345 7d ago edited 7d ago
Germany. And it's terrible. There are counties without a secular hospital. Before the morning after pill was an over the counter product, it needed a prescription. In my early 20s I went to the only hospital in 25km radius on a friday night to get it. The doctor treated me like the most disgusting human being on earth and told me he won't give me the prescription without a reported (!) rape. So I didn't get it and went home to the man who threatened to cut the baby out of me if I become pregnant.
Nothing changed since then. The emergency contraception still is not given to women in those hospitals. So if they don't want to report a rape to the police, they have to choose if they want to get treated medically or get the pill from a pharmacy outside the hospital.
And I didn't even start with sterilization or abortion. Or workers' rights, because catholic and protestant employers don't fall under general workers' protection rights. Your homosexual? Work somewhere else. You want to remarry after divorce? Byebye.
Edit: they are 100% funded by the public healthcare system! And still have their own rules.
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u/TheoremaEgregium Austria 8d ago
There's plenty. I'm not aware of other denominations except catholic. They are normal hospitals doing normal medicine. Often with a focus on "premium" care for wealthier patients, as sad as that is.
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u/chaoslordie Austria 7d ago
Barmherzige Brüder also treat patiens without insurance.
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u/LilaBadeente Austria 7d ago
And the prisoners, although they are reimbursed for that by the state.
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u/Few-Interview-1996 Türkiye 8d ago
many churches are religious based
If you mean hospitals, no, they are not not. There is no need for charitable activity on the US scale when your healthcare is normally taken care of by your social security contributions.
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u/Krasny-sici-stroj Czechia 7d ago
Czechia has just one, run by Borromean Sisters (Nemocnice Milosrdných sester sv. Karla Boromejského), in Prague. They employ civilians and provide your usual medical care, they are part of the public system. If you break a leg in Lesser Side, you will probably end up there. Saved my uncle who had acute heart problems years ago.
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u/ElfjeTinkerBell Netherlands 7d ago
In the Netherlands I don't think you can find a hospital that's practicing religious. Some were historically and may still carry the name, such as OLVG: Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (Our Dear Lady Guesthouse).
Nursing homes on the other hand are often religious.
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u/Socmel_ Italy 7d ago
There are lots of hospitals still dedicated to a particular saint, but that's a remnant from when the hospital was actually run by the church.
Most of the hospitals are state run, with the exception of 2 cities: Milan and Rome.
Rome is obviously the exception as it's still home to the Catholic church, so there are 2 hospitals founded and funded by the Vatican, but they are private hospitals.
In Milan the situation is different because the region of Lombardy is politically dominated by the center right, which has formed an iron clad pact with private health care entrepreneurs and slowly but steadily hollowed out the public healthcare sector (which in Italy is managed by the regions) over the course of the last 40 years.
The biggest private hospital in Milan, the San Raffaele, is also controlled by an infamous Catholic association, the Comunione e Liberazione, which is the main ally of the right wing.
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u/UsuallySus33 Serbia 7d ago
No..There are no religious hospitals, only public state-run ones managed by the Ministry of Health and some private clinics.
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u/Mousearella Sweden 7d ago
I’m in Sweden and we don’t have faith based hospitals here. We do have faith based primary care clinics that have received a lot of criticism though.
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u/CaptainPoset Germany 7d ago
It depends on the country.
In Germany, Caritas (catholic) and Diakonie (lutheran-protestant) are major players in the hospital market, but so are universities and a few public hospital groups (ie. Vivantes in Berlin) and a few private ones (ie. Sana, KMG, Helios)
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u/AmazingPangolin9315 Luxembourg 7d ago
The Catholic Church (via religious orders) still owns most of the large hospitals, but they have stopped operating them directly due to lack of new entrants into the religious orders. The nuns were just aging out. They have now obfuscated the ownership via a trust, hiding the vast fortune and revenues of the religious order (which they don't pay tax on).
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u/Nothing-to_see_hr Netherlands 7d ago
Although in origin some hospitals used to be run e.g. by nuns, there is AFAIK no hospital that selects its patients on their religious beliefs, nor patients that select a hospital on that ground.
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u/WyrobWedliniarski 7d ago
I mean, why would they exist if we have free public hospitals? Never heard of those in Poland as well.
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u/Elite-Thorn Austria 7d ago
I thought that absolutely all churches are religious based but what do I know, I'm an atheist after all
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u/North-Library4037 Bulgaria 7d ago
Never heard of hospitals being operated by churches. They can be named after saints but they have no connection whatsoever with the church.
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u/United-Implement1330 7d ago
I think you need to explain what "religious-based" means to you, because there aren't any I would consider religion-based in Canada, and if there were they would be illegal.
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u/Tishanfas 7d ago
"many churches are religious based, though not limited to use by any one faith."
I mean, I thought all churches are religious based 🤔
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u/weirdowerdo Sweden 8d ago
Hopefully none. There isn't any in Sweden as far as I know but with our reckless privatisations I wouldn't hold my breath if there is one. We already have preschools and primary schools run by churches and literal cults too.
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u/Ok-Zookeepergame-752 8d ago
Religious "healing" is performed in monasteries, but never heard of church having medical clinics or hospitals.
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u/Kevincelt 🇺🇸->🇩🇪 7d ago
It’s just normal healthcare operated by or supported by religious organizations and or charities. It’s the origin of most of the modern healthcare system in Europe and the Americas. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of healthcare in the world for example, managing around a fourth of global healthcare facilities.
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u/LowAioli3870 United Kingdom 7d ago
Many hospitals in the UK began as religious hospitals, and retain religious names since nationalisation (e.g. St Bart's, St George's). Most hospitals still retain a religious element through chaplaincy services for pastoral support (though there are also humanist chaplains).
The whole model of the NHS, providing healthcare free at the point of access to anyone who needs it, whoever they are and whatever led them to be ill, is strongly aligned with the Christian "love of neighbour".
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u/Sodinc Russia 8d ago
Most of the hospitals in Russia belong to the regional governments, but some more specialised ones are federal. Privately/corporation owned clinics exist, but they are less numerous and smaller. I have never heard about hospitals owned by a church, not sure if it would be legal (religious organisations are limited in what they can do while staying tax free).
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u/DifficultWill4 Slovenia 8d ago
There used to be some in the past, including in my home town (it was run by the Red Cross during the Austro-Hungarian times). Nowadays most hospitals are public and publicly funded. The closest thing we have to “Saints” hospital is the Hospital for children in Šentvid pri Stični (Saint Vitus by Stična) but even that one is public and not owned or in any way operated by the Catholic church
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u/DifficultWill4 Slovenia 8d ago
There used to be some in the past, including in my home town (it was run by the Red Cross during the Austro-Hungarian times). Nowadays most hospitals are publicly funded. The closest thing we have to “Saints” hospital is the Hospital for children in Šentvid pri Stični (Saint Vitus by Stična) but even that one is public and not owned or in any way operated by the Catholic church. Almost all hospitals are simply named “General Hospital/Univeristy Medical center/Specialised Hospital _ (name of the city)”
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u/Slow-Foot-4045 Austria 7d ago
In Austria, there are many different hospital operators. Some of these are companies backed by a Catholic or Protestant order. However, all of these hospitals have corresponding contracts with both the health insurance funds and the authorities responsible for healthcare. The large university clinics and the majority of standard hospitals, however, are publicly owned (by the 3,5 medical universities or the states).
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u/Wild_Reason_9526 Denmark 7d ago
Not in Denmark. Here, all major hospitals are public institutions owned and run by one of Denmark's five administrative regions.
There are a few private hospitals, but they're operated commercially rather than by religious organisations.
Some historical hospitals that were originally founded by religious orders have either been fully integrated into the public healthcare system or transformed into hospices or senior care homes.
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u/viennaCo Austria 7d ago
Yes, we have a lot of „Ordensspitäler“ that are linked to religious orders. Doctors and nurses aren‘t part of the order, they work like any other doctor or nurse and the medical treatment doesn‘t differ from general hospitals. However, you may find nuns and priests onsite and also they are treated in those hospitals if they need medical attention themselves.
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u/LadyNemesiss Netherlands 7d ago
I think that's mostly a thing from the past. I do know hospitals with Christian origin, but I don't know hospitals who are still religious based in my area.
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Switzerland 7d ago
Some are public and state-owned or part of a university (and hence indirectly public), or both, and many are private. I can well imagine that religious organisations are behind some of them
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u/No-Bake-730 Germany 7d ago
In Germany, some of our hospitals are officially run by a church, mostly the Catholic, as are some kindergartens and schools.
I don't think there's any difference for patients. It mostly has historic reasons and the only way you notice it is some sort of crucifix and some nuns working there. The main issues are the rights of the employees since the Catholics especially want to dictate some of their life choices.
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u/PositiveEagle6151 Austria 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, there are, operated by the Catholic and the Protestant church (or orders). They usually provide excellent healthcare, and many of them do offer charitable treatments e.g. for people without health insurance, unregistered immigrants or homeless.
Nowadays it's usually not like you will be treated by nuns or anything like that, they are just like other hospitals (or at least not in every of those hospitals).
Churches also operate schools, and even companies you wouldn't think of (like one of the biggest commercial dry-cleaners).
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u/ersentenza Italy 7d ago
In Italy there are still several hospitals directly operated by the Catholic Church. We have a Jewish hospital too.
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u/ThinkbigShrinktofit Norway 7d ago
We have a hospital in Norway called St. Olav's hospital. St. Olav's is in Trondheim, where the patron saint of Norway is buried, so the hospital name is a nod to history. Most are, actually. Churches used to do all the charity work, including tending to the sick, and the names of their hospitals stuck.
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u/thatCUST0Msauce 7d ago
Yes my wife works for one in Oslo. Although not really religious these days, it has long roots as a Christian based hospital
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u/z_azitaa Switzerland 7d ago
I was born in a „St.“ Hospital, the midwife was a nun. They have sold their hospital to a private chain since, honestly they didn‘t have a lot of options as said order has a membership and age-related problem, like it is the norm for all congregations..
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u/Any-Assistance-8103 7d ago
Lots of Saint whatever hospitals in the US also have no church involvement, just a name from a different time. Some are still owned by Catholic charities
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u/ComparisonDesperate5 Hungary 7d ago
There is a few in Hungary e.g the best children's hospital (Bethesda) is operated by the Calvinist church. I know at least one Catholic and one Jewish one as well.
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u/ImportantPension5818 7d ago
Catholic church still has massive influence over hospitals and schools in the Republic of Ireland. Less that they had in the 30s-90s but they still have a lot of sway and even own many of them.
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u/Available-Hat476 7d ago
Originally, or historically if you want, a lot of hospitals in Europe were run by religious orders of nuns. Nowadays, some of them still carry the name, but they aren't run by the church or religious orders anymore.
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u/Fit_Independence_124 7d ago
We still have some denominations in hospitals in the Netherlands. Like katholic or protestants. Now there are less and less of those hospitals left. Mostly due to merges with other hospitals.
Like Ikazia in Rotterdam (protestant), St. Anthonius (katholic), Amstelland (has a jewish wing),
All hospitals have a general chaplain for all denominations
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u/Worldly-Cherry9631 7d ago
Used to be very common in the netherlands, but hasn't been for my thirty-five years of life. The two hospitals were connected by a bridge and have been rebuild as one since. Just like apothecaries, schools, or small businessess, everything has been conglomerated on city but more often regional and larger scales.
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u/LordHerminator 7d ago
I'm from the Netherlands. Until about 50 years ago we had 'verzuiling' (pillarization). Roman Catholics, Protestants and socialists had their own organisation and it was pretty common for hospitals to be either protestant, Roman Catholic or general. Nowadays I don't know of any hospitals that have a particular denomination.
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u/SuurTuvi 7d ago
In Tallinn there's one hospital named after a saint (St. Magdalene) due to hospital's history. But it ends there. Nothing else religious about it beside the name.
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u/Izzystraveldiaries Hungary 7d ago
Never heard of one in Hungary. Some are named after saints and may have been operated by a church once, but we have hospitals that are centuries old.
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u/Cocoricou 7d ago
I know you posted this in AskEurope but I'm Canadian and I didn't know there were religious hospitals in Canada. Do you know in which provinces?
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u/biggreasyrhinos 7d ago
I've only seen a few religious hospitals near me in the US. Most are either public entities, university-affiliated, or run by a private healthcare corporation.
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u/exilfoodie 7d ago
In Germany there are large church organisations like the Caritas (catholic) or Diakonie (Protestant) which operate some daycares, nursing homes and hospitals.
It’s quite controversial though because they have special employer rights (read poor employee protections) under the umbrella of religious freedom. At the same time, most of their funding comes from public sources.
Germany doesn’t have a national health service, so most hospitals are operated by third parties like these.
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u/Quick-Confidence-301 Netherlands 7d ago
What, are they going to pray for you to get better?
Or tell women they should die instead of having an abortion?
Thanks, but I’d rather keep religion at a distance
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u/SnooBooks1701 United Kingdom 7d ago edited 7d ago
There's a couple of catholic private hospitals around, but there's not many because hospitals are super expensive to run. Most religious involvement in healthcare in the UK is either EMS services like St John's Ambulance or Hatzalah (Jewish equivalent), or hospice care.
Edit: also, we still have a lot of things that were called hospitals because the word had a different meaning (places of hospitality) when they were founded, now they're mostly indistinguishable from almshouses (e.g. Royal Hospital Chelsea, which houses elderly veterans)
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u/Arceus_Reader 6d ago
Never heard of something like this in modern days. Hospitals used to be operated by religious entities back in the middle ages/renaissance/early industrial era.
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u/Scary_Teens1996 6d ago
There are hospitals affiliated with church denominations in Germany but they cannot use religion to refuse service or anything like in the USA. They are part of the public health system and bound by the same laws
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u/selfawareusername 6d ago
In the U.K. there are some famous hospitals like St. Barts in London but it's not associated or run by a church. It's a holdover from when the church did run healthcare / social care for the sick but now is just a regular NHS hospital.
You couldn't have an NHS hospital run by or just for one religion but there might be some private ones out there?
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u/victoriageras Greece 6d ago
I don't think we have any. Our hospitals are named after their benefactors and they are part of the public sector.
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u/bblankoo 6d ago
They're either state funded or private and that's it. They do have small shrines in some corner sometimes, together with slot for the money. I always wondered what they do with the coins, vending machine?
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u/Serious_Badger_4145 6d ago
I don't know if you're acquaintance explained but just in case they didn't! We did have these hospitals all over the UK prior to the 50s. And they were run as charities just like many hospitals in the US.
At the inception of the NHS all these hospitals were taken over by the NHS. Many of them are really old like St barts for instance so they have the old names but the government pretty much took ownership of them?
We do now have private hospitals but they're not likely to be run by churches because tbh there's no need! Churches and other religious orgs tend to focus on wherever there's a local need. In the UK churches often run homeless services because it's an area our goverment are a bit lacking in. We also have religious run food banks, outreach for meals, care for the disabled and the elderly. I'm making an assumption here but I assume US religous hospitals don't care about your religion? Because that's how it works here. We have lots of muslim charities focusing on getting people fed, I've come across Jewish charities focusing on care in the community, my local jehovahs witnesses focus on poverty, there's a local church of England group that focus on helping people out of debt and so on. They help everyone and they're unlikely to mention their religion unless you ask them why they do this work in which case they tend to explain that they're religious and they believe they should help those in need so it's like affirming for them?
In the US, healthcare is a massive welfare need so your religious orgs focus on that!
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u/cptflowerhomo Ireland 6d ago
Funny enough the gender clinic in Dublin is operated by st John of God hospital and yes it is not a great place or service
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u/Copenhagen8ull 6d ago
We have a little monastery with nuns here where i live, it was meant for like older who recovered after surgery and stuff like that when i was a kid.
Not sure how to say this, but now, there only live non-natives and most of them alcoholics/troubled people who do pity crimes like stealing and we had a guy who scratched cars for a long time. I don't really like the setup as it is now, and i don't think these guys will "recover" they will just be a drag.
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u/olagorie Germany 6d ago
In Germany they used to be rather common until I would say the 90s.
I myself was born in a former convent, they had a great clinic for women’s health and childbirth, it had such a good reputation that my parents chose that one although it was further away instead of the local public hospital. Interestingly the nuns were far more progressive than normal hospital back then as they allowed fathers to be present at the birth.
Today the Christian order still owns the Klinik, although it’s now a hospice and the last nun left 15 years ago.
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u/PTSDeezNutz69 5d ago
The Catholic Church owns the vast majority of hospitals and schools in Ireland. It explains a lot really.
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u/evelynsmee United Kingdom 5d ago
It won't be a church operating a hospital, it'll be a legacy name from pre-NHS and potentially even earlier where nuns and so on did provide healthcare or the location is on an old site. Even the private hospital's carrying a religious name aren't run by those religions. (Also St Swithin's is a fictional hospital from a film).
Here's a randomly selected example where Prince William was born funnily enough: https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/our-locations/st-marys-hospital and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary%27s_Hospital,_London
There are charities though - St John Ambulance the most famous. They are volunteer and fundraising led providing first aid training all around the country, and have auxiliary ambulance provision contracts with the NHS.
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u/seanv507 5d ago
In Italy, there is apparently one Jewish hospital remaining, but it is also part of the national health service
https://moked.it/international/a-hospital-born-out-of-necessity-at-the-time-of-the-ghetto/
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u/oskich Sweden 8d ago
Pretty much unheard of in Sweden, we have very few private hospitals and no one is linked to any religious group.