The Catholic bishop of Phoenix will strip St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center of its Catholic status on Friday if the hospital's parent company, Catholic Healthcare West, does not meet his demands to guarantee compliance with church teachings.
Three demands were contained in a Nov. 22 letter Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted sent to Lloyd Dean, president of Catholic Healthcare West. The bishop wants the hospital to give him more oversight of its practices to ensure it complies with Catholic health-care rules, provide education on those rules to medical staff and acknowledge that the bishop is correct in a dispute over a procedure the diocese says was an abortion.
"There cannot be a tie in this debate," Olmsted wrote. "Until this point in time, you have not acknowledged my authority to settle this question."
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