About fifteen long white tents sprang up on the lawns of East Meadow in northeast Central Park last week. A field hospital set up in record time, with 68 beds to accommodate patients with Covid-19, to relieve the New York hospital of Mount Sinai, across Fifth Avenue. The first American city experienced Wednesday the deadliest day since the beginning of the epidemic of new coronavirus, and counts more than 4,500 of the approximately 14,000 deaths recorded so far in the United States.
Christian caregivers recruited
The temporary hospital, right in the middle of Manhattan’s iconic green lung, was built, funded, and managed entirely by the Samaritan’s Purse organization. An evangelical Christian humanitarian NGO, more used to pitching its tents in countries at war than on the Upper East Side, chaired by the missionary Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham, one of the most influential evangelical leaders of the XXe century, died in 2018). In the evangelical community, today the largest and most dynamic religious movement in the United States (80 million Americans, approximately 25% of the population), the president of Samaritan’s Purse is one of the most fervent allies by Donald Trump. Graham, who attacks regularly “The hidden intentions of homosexuals”, the “Transgender lie” or qualifies Islam as “diabolical”, had also read a prayer on the steps of the Capitol for the inauguration of Trump. Celebrating a president chosen by 81% of the nation’s white evangelical Christians in the November 2016 election.
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As with all its humanitarian operations, Samaritan’s Purse has only recruited Christian caregivers for its Central Park hospital, where, according to the organization, 40 patients are currently being treated, including 6 in intensive care. Volunteers had to endorse the organization’s profession of faith, which explicitly condemns same-sex marriage and abortion (and promises “Unjust” that they will be “Punished by hell for eternity”). The coronavirus exists “Because man has committed sins: he has turned his back on God”, Franklin Graham claimed on Fox News on Saturday. “This health crisis is far too delicate for us to let televangelists and other merchants of faith manage our medical needs”, was moved Brad Hoylman, elected Democrat to the Senate of New York, gay, married and father of a family. Regretting that the inertia of the US federal government in the face of the coronavirus has forced the city “To accept the charity of such fanatics”.
Treat all sick fairly
Asked by journalists about possible patient discrimination, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised “To send” members of his team to “monitor” the activities of Samaritan’s Purse, while affirming that the organization is committed to respecting “Values and laws” of the city and to treat all sick fairly. The governor of the state, Andrew Cuomo, swept aside the concerns, faced with the health emergency and the pressure exerted on New York hospitals by the influx of Covid-19 patients: “Anyone who can help, God bless them.”
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