In October 2022, the Saint Francis Foundation provided $2.6 million to San Francisco’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital (SFMH) to purchase a second da Vinci system, per a 64-page report by the Lepanto Institute, a Catholic think tank. The platform is a robot that aids in surgeries, including those for gender reassignment.
Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, California, is operated by Dignity Health. Catholic Health Initiative and Dignity Health merged in 2019 to form CommonSpirit Health, now the largest Catholic health network in the United States. Other facilities affiliated with SMHF provide medical procedures aimed at changing an individual’s sexual orientation.
Saint Francis Memorial Hospital’s gender center offers various sex transition surgeries, including hysterectomies, vocal cord surgery, penile inversions, scrotalplasties, and jaw contouring.
SFMH belongs to the most prominent Catholic health network in the US. They created a YouTube video showcasing a transgender individual who underwent gender reassignment surgery at their facility. The movie promotes undergoing sex change surgeries to discover one’s genuine identity.
The 2022 Annual Report for CommonSpirit Health states that the Saint Francis Foundation has given over $7.1 million to the institute for advanced robotic surgical equipment and training since 2016.
Additionally, the hospital emphasizes that philanthropy is aiding in providing cost-effective healthcare to transgender patients.
Saint Francis Memorial Hospital received $2,128,662 from CommonSpirit in 2019 and 2020, per the organization’s IRS 990s.
CommonSpirit is a Catholic organization authorized by the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, based in Rome near St. Peter’s Basilica.
Earlier this year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement declaring that Catholic healthcare providers should not perform any surgeries or chemical treatments that aim to change a person’s sexual characteristics to those of the opposite sex, nor should they participate in developing such procedures.
