Angelus News | May 17, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 18

An AA candidate for sainthood?
How the holiness of Sister Mary Ignatia Gavin rescued
countless Americans from alcohol addiction
BY MSGR. RICHARD ANTALL / ANGELUS
A
Portuguese proverb has it that God writes straight
with crooked lines. The story of Sister Mary Ignatia
Gavin, CSA, seems to illustrate that maxim.
She was born in Ireland and baptized Mary
Della Gavin. She immigrated to America with her family
when she was 7 years old. The family was poor and made
the journey as “two-boaters,” as the Irish immigrants on the
East Coast called them.
Their first boat was to Newfoundland, and the little girl
won the contest of being
the first to sight land on the
14-day voyage to Canada.
From there passage to the
United States was cheaper.
The family settled in
Cleveland, Ohio. Her
father worked as a laborer
and supplemented his
income with a part-time job
as a watchman.
Mary was given music
lessons and became very
proficient at the piano,
eventually becoming a
private music teacher.
When she began to think
of a religious vocation,
her mother resisted the
idea, hoping to keep her at
home. Nevertheless, at 25
years old, she joined the
Sister Ignatia at Rosary Hall.
Sisters of St. Augustine, a community that worked with
orphans and the sick.
The community took advantage of her musical ability and
she worked especially with the orphans teaching music.
She was a perfectionist and struggled with some of her
duties, especially since she had as an assistant a sister who
seemed to have had mental problems.
Ignatia eventually developed her own problems. Bleeding
ulcers and what she called a “nervous breakdown” ended
her career as a music teacher. The doctor told her, “You
can either be a live nun or a dead musician. Which will it
be?” After a long recovery in one of the community’s hospitals,
she was assigned to work as a registrar in St. Thomas
Hospital in Akron.
The work as registrar was supposed to be easier for her,
but God had other plans. Ignatia met Dr. Bob Smith, the
co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and their instant
rapport led her to begin admitting alcoholic patients
in the throes of addiction, sometimes under disguised
diagnoses.
Together with Dr. Bob, she created the first medical
treatment program for alcoholics in a Catholic hospital.
Sister Ignatia saw that the alcoholic was sick in body, mind,
and spirit, and tailored a program with AA participation
that was both original in
concept and very successful
in practice.
The first admitting of an alcoholic
as such at St. Thomas
Hospital was Aug. 16,
1939, a date that has entered
the annals of AA history. The
medical treatment coincided
with an explosion of AA
membership. Eventually, St.
Thomas Hospital was recognized
as a pioneer in the field
SISTERS OF CHARITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE
of treating addiction.
Dr. Bob and his wife, Ann,
died and Ignatia continued
the work. Then she was transferred
away from St. Thomas.
Although it is unclear why
exactly she was moved, it did
not help that she had many
conflicts about administration
and finances, and that she was receiving more attention
than some of her community appreciated.
It was a second setback to Ignatia. She wrote to Bill
Wilson that she did not know whether she would be able to
help alcoholics at her new mission in St. Vincent Charity
Hospital in Cleveland.
She prayed and was obedient and eventually talked her
superiors into opening a special ward for recovering alcoholics
she named Rosary Hall Solarium. The words had
the extra meaning for her of being the initials of her old
friend Dr. Robert H. Smith. Again God had written straight
with crooked lines — what had seemed a detour was only
God’s course correction.
Although she shunned publicity, Ignatia was celebrated by
her grateful friends. Wilson wrote at the time of her golden
20 • ANGELUS • May 17, 2019