The city's mainly Protestant and nativist leadership did not adequately address the healthcare needs of the rapidly growing and mostly Catholic working class, partly due to prejudice.

He believed these qualifications made them the ideal religious congregation to work in such a hostile anti-Catholic atmosphere as Buffalo was at the time.

[3] Bishop Timon had purchased an unused brick schoolhouse and adjoining cottage at Pearl Place, which he gave to the Sisters to use.

Religious orders of women, who lived and worked in a peculiar all female community, created and maintained schools, orphanages and hospitals.

American sisters had to cope with gender, religious and ethnic bigotry while working in a patriarchal society that limited any power they might have.

Protestants, especially males, may have felt more threatened by the nuns as they perceived them to be in the process of "feminizing" the Catholic Church and usurping power.

Lubienecki wrote that the event was still fresh in the minds of the people of New York, and that the Protestant men of Buffalo felt threatened, increasing their strong objection to the educated, Catholic females who were running a now-state funded hospital.

[3] Buffalo's elite began speaking out against the Sisters Hospital and its state funding, criticizing its all-female leadership, lack of physicians' influence in decision making, and small staff.

In early February 1850, Protestant doctors Josiah Trowbridge, Austin Flint, and James White privately complained to influential local Presbyterian minister, Reverend John C. Lord, DD, a firm nativist and anti-Catholic, about the administration of the hospital, arguing that three Sisters alone was not proper for the management of an entire hospital.

"[3] Reverend Lord wrote a heated letter in reply, calling the idea of the hospital as charitable "ridiculous".

Bernard O'Reilly with the letter-writing feud while he focused on acquiring further state funds to expand the hospital and build an orphanage and school for the deaf.

In the Christian Advocate, a Protestant newspaper at which Reverend Lord was editor, he questioned why anyone who defends the Constitution "will be willing to be taxed to build up an institution the control of which is beyond the votes of a free republican people.

O'Reilly responded with a letter the next day reminding that the hospital existed to provide "corporeal mercy" for the sick and injured and that "the doors of that institution are as free to the clergy of one denomination of believers as they are to that of another.

[3] In reality, Bishop Timon, carefully recognizing the risk of proselytizing in such a hostile area, specifically forbad the Sisters of Charity from ever mentioning religion to Protestants unless one initiated the topic independently.

He reported that Reverend Lord offered him clothes and enough money to travel to Canada, where he was relocating, if he would tell the "emigrant agent office" that he was treated poorly by the Sisters of Charity.

Bishop Timon abruptly ceased responding to Reverend Lord's public letters; he was too busy with his efforts procuring additional state funding to expand the hospital.

[3] In 1850, after months of public feuding between the Catholic and Protestant leaders of Buffalo, the New York State Legislature passed multiple bills denying additional funding to Sisters of Charity Hospital.

The degree of patience and endurance exhibited by the Sisters of charity in their unwearied labors of mercy was a matter of astonishment not less than of admiration.

[3] Even Whig-Catholic relations were somewhat improved, with one faction of the party promising state funding for Catholic schools and institutions.

[3] In 1854, using the state funding, the Daughters of Charity began expanding in Buffalo, founding St. Mary's Infant Asylum and Maternity Hospital at Elmwood and Edward Streets.

It served nearly entirely orphans and unwed mothers, leaving the main hospital more space for the average ill person.

The first, a 1948 addition, currently houses the hospital's Emergency Department, Family Health Center, patient rooms, and outpatient treatment areas.

[15] Re-Vision 2000, a modernization push by the hospital, included a 1994 renovation, 1992 two-story addition containing new intensive care and coronary care units, 1992 new information services and finance building named after Sr. Mary Charles Dever, DC, former hospital President and CEO, and in 1993, a new Surgical Department.

President and CEO Peter U. Bergmann expressed surprise and sadness at the news, although he affirmed that the order would continue their sponsorship of the hospital and membership on the Catholic Health System board.