NUNS TO FLY FROM ROME

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25389, 12 January 1948, Page 2

NUNS TO FLY FROM ROME

STAFF FOR AUSTRALIAN HOSPITAL

SPECIAL FITTINGS IN AIRCRAFT (From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, January 3. Arrangements have been made, to fly 10 nursing nuns from Rome to Melbourne this month to relieve an -acute staff shortage at the Malvern Gaiholic private hospital. A Lodestar airliner has been converted for the flight. The nuns are being hurried to Australia in response to an urgent appeal by the Roman Catholic Vicar-General of the Melbourne Archdiocese (Monsignor A. Fox) to the Mothen-General of the order of the Sisters of Mercy in Rome. Heavy curtains will be fitted over the cabin windows to ensure privacy,! and a little altar is being installed in the cabin, so that the nuns will be able to say their prayers. Convents along the route have been asked to provide the nuns with over-night accommodation on the flight. The commander of the aircraft (Captain B. Starkey) said that the aircraft would leave Rome on a Sunday after the nuns had attended Mass. Captain Starkey has flown 1,500,000 miles and has more than 10,000 flying hours, but he says that this trip will be one of the strangest in aviation history.