'Sister-Doctor' loves caring for others, body and soul

In her white physician’s coat and white blouse adorned with a small, silver crucifix, not many of her patients over the last 45 years would have suspected that the silver-haired woman behind the stethoscope – Marianite Sister Mary Madonna Baudier – was, indeed, a trailblazing Catholic nun.

And, that’s exactly how she liked it.

When Sister Mary Madonna became the first Catholic nun in Louisiana to become a doctor in 1979, her daily habit was the white coat she wore and the 1980s-era beeper she clipped to her waistband as a family medicine teacher at LSU Medical School and, since Katrina, as a family medicine physician at Touro Infirmary. She and the late Sister of St. Joseph Ann Barker, who graduated with her, were the first “doctor-nuns” in the state.

“When people find out, they call me Doctor-Sister or Sister-Doctor,” Sister Mary Madonna said, laughing. “I still get it both ways.”

Paging Sister Mary Madonna

Just recently retired from active practice at Touro and now living in the Marianites’ community on the northshore, Sister Mary Madonna still keeps the black pager on her hip, much preferring its simplicity and effectiveness to a smartphone’s bells and whistles.

“The pager’s still working, and it works behind lead walls,” she said.

Sister Mary Madonna would never mention it because it might sound too much like an infomercial on Christian charity, but when one of her elderly patients at Touro took an ominously bad turn, rather than sleep in her small dorm room on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans, as she had since 1990, she would catch a few overnight hours of sleep on the third-floor couch in Father Doug Brougher’s chaplain’s office.

“She just wanted to be close to her patients,” said Marianite Sister Judy Gomila, her good friend.

Care for others has been the motivating gene in her life. When Sister Mary Madonna was a Marianite novice in the 1960s, she recalled how much joy she would receive helping Sister Marcella in the community’s infirmary, ministering to the elderly nuns.

Sister Marcella was the head infirmarian, and Sister Mary Madonna remembers the love she showered on the elderly religious who were bedridden with broken legs or hips.

“Sister Marcella was running that whole thing by herself, and she would set her alarm at night to make sure she turned the patients,” Sister Mary Madonna said. “She kept them pristine. No one in that infirmary ever had a bedsore.”

Youthful enthusiasm

Seeing the young novice revel in caring for older sisters made an impression on Sister Marcella, who suggested that the young sister attend nursing school so that she could  acquire the skills to serve in the two Louisiana hospitals where Marianites were stationed. One was in Opelousas and the other was in Lake Providence, a poor rural community in East Carroll Parish tucked against the Arkansas border.

It was while Sister Mary Madonna was stationed in the 30-bed hospital in Lake Providence that her love for medicine grew even deeper, and some encouraged her to consider the wild leap of attending medical school.

“There were only three doctors in the whole city,” she recalled.

One of the physicians was a brilliant but unassuming man who offered rich insight into the medical profession. There also was a sister – a nurse anesthetist – who “was good to me” and taught “me how to do stuff if I didn’t know how to do, because we did everything.”

“I was working by myself one night and a lady comes to the back door and tells me, ‘I had a baby at home, and I’m fixing to have another one,’” Sister Mary Madonna said. “I caught the other baby.”

Both babies were tiny and frail and died a short time later.

“They both had a heartbeat, but there was no way to do anything else in those days,” she said.

Life at Loyola

For about 30 years, Sister Mary Madonna did things outside of her physician’s practice that also made her a beacon to college students. Living in the Loyola dorms, she regularly interacted with students, whenever they needed to talk. She earned a master’s degree in religious studies, going to one class at a time.

“I wasn’t a counselor, because I’m not supposed to be; I was more of a reference person,” she said. “I’m an adult.”

She found spiritual strength in witnessing the faith of her students. For decades she helped with the Awakening retreat program that was student-led.

“The students do all the talking, and it’s the same sort of thing that you would do on any kind of religious retreat, something that moves people toward contrition,” Sister Mary Madonna said. “And, then, you have unity. The big thing is to help each other, and that’s very needed in the college age. They think they are all grown, but they need to learn from their peers. It’s the peers rather than the mommy or the daddy or a teacher saying ‘blah, blah, blah.’”

They knew she cared

When Sister Mary Madonna was overseeing residents at LSU Medical School, that sense of connectedness was more than just a teaching method. By then, the residents did know that their boss was a nun, so perhaps they tempered their language out of deference to her vocation.

“They probably did it behind my back, but we had a very good program,” Sister Mary Madonna said. “I mainly wanted them to feel good about family medicine. As teachers, we were there to help them, and I always made it a point that if we had to talk about something, we didn’t do it in front of the patient.

“I stayed around (the residents) all the time. At the beginning, they probably didn’t like it having me around all the time, but they were mostly glad, and we made it fun for them. I wanted to be the person who was going to help them do their best.”

In her other, mostly hidden life at Loyola for three decades, she would iron the altar cloths and linens for the Jesuit priests at Ignatius Chapel.

The pioneering nun, who some at Holy Name of Jesus Parish have called their “living icon,” doesn’t look at her achievements as anything more than the result of simply having the opportunity to serve.

“I love the whole thing,” she said. “I hope I did all right.”

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