In Contrast, There Have Been 8 China Flu Deaths in MISSOURI

 This is an amazing story.

St. Louis, Mo., Mar 25, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- In the basement of St. Francis Xavier College Church on the campus of Saint Louis University stands a statue of the Blessed Mother and the Child Jesus.

Cut from plain white stone, the statue stands smaller-than-life on a pedestal across from a small chapel. It bears some obvious signs of age: the fingers on the child’s hand, extended in blessing, have eroded away, and the corner of Mary’s lips displays a darkened blemish. It appears, on first sight, rather unremarkable.

Unremarkable, that is, until one learns its place in the history of the school.

Weirdly, the Bishop KEPT THE CHURCHES OPEN!

By May 1849, the situation had grown dire. A letter from Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., then second-in-command of the local Jesuit province, records that in that month, prayers against the calamity were “said every evening in our churches and novenas said in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” Among these churches was St. Francis Xavier.

WOW.

 The official death toll for the city from cholera that year stands at 5,547. The actual number is almost certainly far higher due to the inexactitude of many records and the fact that many of the dead were buried outside the city proper. Many estimates, Gordon said, place the actual number between 7,000 and 8,000. Either way, it amounts to a sizable fraction of the 77,000 population in the city.


With students back at the school, they were all of them safe from the effects of cholera, and all priests remained in good health despite their constant ministry to the sick.
The epidemic that had claimed around a tenth of the population of the city and wreaked havoc across the world had not crept into campus walls. The student body remained whole, and none of the Jesuits had not fallen sick despite their vigorous ministry to the infirm.