A painting by Barbara A. Brown, a parishioner of Saint Joseph Catholic Parish in Wapakoneta, Ohio, depicts Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska, RN pushing a person in a wheelchair down a wooded path toward a cross tipped church.

In her biography of Blessed Hanna Chrzanowska, RN, A Nurse of Mercy, Gosia Brykczynska describes Hanna’s drive and desire to develop Parish Nursing.  Her passion is recounted in bringing the hope and healing of Christ to the chronically sick and housebound amidst the prying Communist authorities in post World War II, Polish People’s Republic.  Gosia writes, “Hanna worked with the marginalized and abandoned and the sick in response to the model offered by Jesus in the Gospels.”

Hanna saw the great need of retreats for the housebound and wheelchair dependent.  She began to organize them at Trzebini Retreat Centre.  Gosia writes, “one woman started to cry as students carried her from her flat to be taken to Trzebinia Retreat Centre. When asked why she was upset she answered, ‘I’m not upset.  These are tears of joy because it’s been year since I felt rain fall on my face!'”