The hospital Saint Franciscus was founded by a Roman Catholic congregation, the Franciscan Sisters of Heythuysen. The hospital had been a so-called inlandsch ziekenhuis and a Government Civil Hospital before. In the 1920s it was taken over by the Roman Catolic Mission Organization and received subsidy from the NI Government. The first time it was mentioned in the Subsidy papers was in 1919 (Koloniaal Verslag 1920, Annex Q-XI), when it was accorded subsidy for the establishment and initial investments of this hospital (Resp. f 900 and f  3,500) with the description: Vereeniging Roomsch-katholieke kweekschool te Muntilan.  Jan Willemsen, Van tentoonstelling tot wereldorgani-satie, p. 94 mentions 1926 as the date of establishment, but the date of actual subsidy must mean that the hospital was there before 1926, probably in 1919.

See also Dutch Missionary Activities with a series of oral histories of nuns, working in education and health care in Indonesia, 87 Interview met M.E.A. Savelbergh KMM file nr. 465. Sister Hildegardis worked in the NI from 1924-1951. She was a nurse and superior and worked in Semarang to start a new Roman Catholic hospital there. She did not like this type of city hospitals, because they were mainly European patients. Later on she was appointed in a small desa hospital and that was more the thing she expected of mission work. She did not like the colonial period and was much more involved in the health care after independance, when she together with some sisters left for Malang and worked in desa hospitals in the neighbourhood.

Mededeelingen DVG 1939 (XXVIII): the training of midwives took also place in the private hospital at Moentilan.