# Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Sisters of Charity

From volume 3 of the work.
Charity, Sisters of.—The various sisterhoods included under this general title are treated of below under their respective names.
Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, a congregation of women with simple vows, founded in 1633 and devoted to corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Their full title is Sisters or Daughters of Charity (the founder preferred the latter term), Servants of the Sick Poor. The term "of St. Vincent de Paul" has been added to distinguish them form several communities of Sisters of Charity, animated with a similar spirit, among whom they rank in priority of origin and greatness of numbers. They have always been popularly known in France as "the Grey Sisters" from the colour of their habit, which is bluish grey, but are not to be confounded with the Grey Nuns, a community will known in Canada and New England. They are not infrequently called the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, though a recent French congregation having this saint for their patron, bears that name.
In the United States several diocesan communities who follow a modified form of the rule of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and wear a black habit are often called the "Black Cap Sisters", while the "White Cap" or "Cornette" Sisters are those who follow the original rule and form part of the world-wide community under the direction of the superior General of the Congregation of the Mission. or Lazarists, in Paris. These latter sisters were founded by St. Vincent de Paul and the Venerable Louise de Mérillac (1591-1660), and the widow of Antoine Le Gras, known according to a quaint usage of the time as Mlle Le Gras. The need of organization in work for the poor suggested to St. Vincent the forming of a confraternity among the people of his parish. It was so successful that it spread form the rural districts to Paris, where noble ladies often found it hard to give personal care to the wants of the poor. The majority sent their servants to minister to those in need, but often the work was slighted. St. Vincent remedied this by inducing young women from the country to go to Paris and devote themselves to the service of the poor under the direction of the Ladies of Charity. These young girls formed the nucleus of a very large community of the Sisters of Charity now spread over the world, and who have done so much to make the name of St. Vincent de Paul a household work. Mlle Le Gras, who had recently devoted herself at St. Vincent's request to the superintendent of the various confraternities of charity, had charge of these young girls, who lodged at some convent or with the ladies of the confraternity. They met on Sundays at St. Vincent's house for instruction and encouragement. But after three or four years Mlle Le Gras received a few of the most promising of them at her house, where, on 29 November, 1633, she began a more systematic training in the care of the sick and in spiritual life. This is looked on as the real foundation of the community. This little snowball, as St. Vincent playfully called it , was not long in increasing, and on 31 July, 1634, St. Vincent initiated a series of conferences, extending over twenty-five years, which, written sown by the sisters, have had ever since a powerful effect in their formation.
For more than twelve years St. Vincent guided them thus without written rule or constitution and without seeking approval of them as a distinct organization. Let the work grow gradually as the needs of the times demanded, and little did he imagine the vast structure he was laying the foundation of. He used to explain that neither he nor Mlle Le Gras was the founder of the Sisters of Charity, for neither he nor she had ever thought of founding such a community. It sprang from the practical need for such organization. When the idea developed it was at variance with the notions and customs of the times. Hitherto women who publicly consecrated their lives to God's service did so in convents that cut them off from the world, but his sisters were to spend their time nursing the sick in their homes, having no monastery but the homes of the sick, their cell a hired room, their chapel the parish church, their enclosure the streets of the city or wards of the hospital, "having", as St. Vincent says in the rule he finally gave them, "no grate but the fear of God, no veil but holy modesty". After a few months spent with the sisters in her house, Mlle LeGras bound herself irrevocably by vow to the work she had undertaken, 25 March, 1634. This anniversary is religiously kept in the community, for every year the sisters make their annual vows on the feast of the Annunciation. The sisters had hitherto helped the poor and the sick in their homes, but they were now called on for hospital work. A society was formed by some ladies of rank to better the condition of the sick poor in Hotel-Dieu at Paris. A community of Augustinian nuns was in charge, but the miseries of the times had overcrowded the wards, and the revenue was inadequate. It was helpers of the ladies who in turn aided the nuns of the institution that the Sisters of Charity took up hospital work which has since become so prominent a feature in their beneficent activity. A large room near by was hired for their use, where they made delicacies for the sick and also for sale, to swell the income of the hospital. During thefirst year the labours of the ladies and sisters were blessed by seven hundred and sixty conversions, of Lutherans, Calvinists, and even of Turks wounded in sea-fights.
In May, 1636, Mlle Le Gras moved to more commodious quarters with her community. A house at La Chapelle was chosen because of its nearness to Saint-Lazare, the priory recently given to St. Vincent for the Congregation of the Priests of the Mission he had founded. Here the instruction of the poor children in religion and in elementary branches was taken up, the beginning of the widespread labour of the Sisters of Charity in teaching the children of the poor. The charge of foundlings so characteristicof St. Vincent and his sisters came to them through his finding out how miserably these tiny waifs were cared for by the State. The modern foundling asylums owe, of not their origin, at least their excellent system to the work of the Sisters of Charity. On 1 Feb., 1640, at Angers the sisters assumed complete charge of a hospital in which hitherto they had acted as aids to the charitable ladies. In 1641 the headquarters of the community was transferred to a house opposite Saint-Lazare. Here they remained until driven away by the French Revolution. In answer to their desire to be bound by vows, authorization was finally granted to four of the sisters, and these on 25 March, 1642, took simple vows for one year. A copy of these first vows is preserved in the archives of the mission in Paris and says:
   I, the undersigned, renew my baptismal promises and make a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience to the Superior of the Priests of the Mission in the company of the Daughtersof Charity, to apply myself all this year to the corporal and spiritual service of the sick poor, our true masters, with the help of God, which I ask though His Son, Jesus crucified, and by the prayers of the Blessed Virgin. Signed, Jeanne de la Croix.
During the war of the Fronde, whole provinces were reduced to the utmost destitution, and St. Vincent took upon himself the burden of relieving all this misery. In this the sisters had a large share. What they did in Paris is seen from St. Vincent's letters: "they shelter from 800 to 900 women; they distribute soup every day to 1300 bashful poor. In St. Paul's parish they aid 5000 poor, and altogether 1400 persons have for the last six months depended on them for their means of subsistence". At the request of the Queen of Poland, a former Lady of Charity, three sisters were sent to her dominions. Here for the first time the sisters appear on the field of battle. This is a ministry often given by them since, and which has secured for then the title of "Angels of the Battlefield", some dying "sword in hand", as St. Vincent used to style it. Their usefulness opened the eyes of many a dying soldier to the light of the Faith, and inspired the wish to die in the religion which produced such heroism.
While the sisters were on the battlefield in Poland, St. Vincent's daughters took up a new work in the care of the aged and infirm at the House of the Name of Jesus, the pioneer of those homes for the aged so multiplied in our day through a kindred community, the Little Sisters of the Poor. At the same time a hospital for the insane was committed to their care, practically completing the list of human miseries to which they brought alleviation.
On the death of Mlle Le Gras and St. Vincent de Paul there were, in 1660, more than forty houses of the Sisters of Charity in France, and the sick poor were cared for in their own dwellings in twenty-six parishes in Paris. As years went on their numbers grew. Switzerland received the sisters in 1750. In 1778 they were established in Piedmont, whence they spread over Italy. The Spanish community was started by six sisters from Paris in 1790. In 1789 France had 426 houses; the sisters numbered about 6000 in Europe. At the very beginning of the Reign of Terror, the motherhouse of the sisters was invaded by the revolutionists, who had attacked Saint-Lazare across the street the night before, but the sight of this band of angels of mercy on their knees in the chapel, moved their assailants to leave them unmolested. In August, 1792, the sisters were ordered to quit the motherhouse; and the end of 1793 saw their community disbanded officially, though the superior, Sister Antoinette Duleau, strive to keep them together as far as practicable. As soon as the Consular government was established, in 1801 the society was recalled by an edict setting forth the excellence of their work and authorizing Citoyenne Duleay, the former superior, to reorganize. Their greatest growth has been in France during the nineteenth century. Persecution has driven them from all their schools for the poor and from most of their works of mercy, but this has given hundreds of new labourers to the foreign missions. During the last hundred years their growth has been extraordinary. They have gone to Austria, Portugal, Hungary, England, Scotland, Ireland, North and south America. The Orientals call them "The Swallows of Allah" from their cornettes, and they have houses in Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Persia, Abyssiania, and China. Their number is about 25,000.
The first house in the province of the British Isles was opened at Drogheda, Ireland, in 1855. The first house in England in Sheffield in 1857; and in Scotland at Lanark in 1860. The numbers of foundations in 1907 was: England, 46 houses and 407 sisters; Ireland, 13 houses and 134 sisters; Scotland, 8 houses and 62 sisters, making a total of 67 houses and 603 sisters, besides 20 aspirants at the Central House, Mill Hill, London. The principal works under the care of the sisters are as follows, several of these works being carried on in the one house: orphanages, 23; industrial schools, 7; public elementary schools, 24; normal school, 1; traininghomes, 7; homes for working girls, 2; home for women ex-convicts, 1; asylum for insane women, 1; hospitals, 8; houses from which the sisters visit the poor, in which they have soup-kitchens, take charge of guilds and do various other works for the poor, 35.
In the United Stated the first community was started by Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1809. She arranged to have sisters come over from the motherhouse in Paris 1810 to affiliate her young community at Emmitsburg, Maryland to the daughters of St. Vincent, but Napoleon forbade the departure of the sisters for America. She had received, however, from Bishop Flaget, the rules of the Sisters of Charity, and put them in practice with some modifications which were suggested. Houses were founded in Philadelphia and New York, when through the request of Archbishop Hughes of New York, in 1846, the majority of the sisters labouring there were released from the Emmitsburg jurisdiction and formed an independent community following the same rule.
Four years after the withdrawal of the New York sisters, Mother Seton's community at Emmitsburg was received under the jurisdiction of the Superior General of the Sisters of Charity in France and assumed the French habit and St. Vincent's rule in its entirety. Their general motherhouse in140 Rue du Bac, Paris, and their central house at St. Joseph's Academy, Emmitsburg, Maryland. They have establishments in the Archdioceses of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and the Dioceses of Albany, Alton, Buffalo, Dallas, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Harrisburg, Hartford, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mobile, Monterey, and Los Angeles, Nashville, Natchez, Richmond, Rochester, St. Joseph, San Antonio, Syracuse, Wilmington, Puerto Rico, and the Vicariate of North Carolina, where there are 1704 sisters in charge of these institutions: academy, 1; hospitals, 38; orphanages, 28; infant asylums, 14; industrial schools, 5; parochial schools, 33; asylums and schools, 6; insane asylums, 5.
The growth of St. Vincent's community has been gradual, and the slowness of their founder in giving it a written rule allowed that rule to have a practicability that has made it as fitted for the democratic notions of our day as for the aristocratic ideas of the old regime. But this is most of all because its animating principle is the saying of Christ, "So long as you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me". In 1646 the approbation of the Archbishop of Paris was asked by St. Vincent for his community, and this was granted in 1655. Though numerous privileges have been granted to the sisters by various popes, no approbation has ever been asked from the Holy See because their founder wished this community to be a lay one with only private vows. Hence the canon law concerning religious communities does not apply to them. Their confessor is the pastor or secular priest approved by the bishop. The interior administration is subject only to superior general. or his delegates. while their interior works are of course under the jurisdiction of the bishop. This has been the case from the very beginning, and the Holy See has on several occasions ratified their long established custom, notably in 1882.
The rule and constitution have remained unchanged since the days of St. Vincent. To his successor, as Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity, the sisters vow obedience. He ratifies the election of the mother general divided into several provinces governed by a visitatrix and a director, a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, who are appointed by the central government. There is no distinction among the sisters; those from the highest as from the humblest walks of life associate together as servants of the poor. The hour of rising is everywhere at four o'clock; then followed meditation and Mass and usually Communion. At noon there is their particular examination of conscience which is made again before supper. In the afternoon there are spiritual reading and another meditation. No office is recited, for "Charity is your office", said St. Vincent. All the rest of the time is given to the poor. He used to tell them that when they left prayer to wait on the poor they were leaving God for God. After three months of approbation the candidate is sent to the "seminary", where she is trained for six months and then admitted to the habit, which is put on without any ceremony whatever, and after a trial of five years she is permitted to take the four annual vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and the service of the poor. The dress is that of peasant women of the neighborhood of Paris at the date of the foundation, a grey habit with wide sleeves and a long grey apron. The head-dress was at first a small linen cap, but to this was added in the early days the white linen cornette. At first it was used only in the country, being in fact the headdress of the Ile de France district, but in 1685 its use became general. Seven sisters were martyred during the French Revolution, and ten laid down their lives for the Faith in 1870 at T'ien-tsin, among whom was an Irishwoman, Sister Alice O'Sullivan. But no one can count the numbers that have died martyrs to duty on the battlefield, or among the plague-stricken, or in the hidden ways of continuous hard work for the poor. In 1830 at the motherhouse of the sisters, Rue du Bac, Paris, Sister Catherine Labouré (declared venerable in 1907) had a vision of the Blessed Virgin, who urged her to have a medal made and distributed, since well known as the miraculous medal, through the wonders wrought in favour of those who wear it devoutly. Pope Leo XIII granted a special feast of Our Lady of Miraculous Medal to the double family of St. Vincent. The scapular of the Passion, or red scapular was revealed to Sister Apollone Andreveau in 1846 and approved by Pope Pius IX in 1847.
B. Randolph.
Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul (Motherhouse at Mt. St. Vincent-on Hudson, New York; not to be confused with the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul founded earlier).—In 1817 Sister Rose White, Cecilia O'Conway and Elizabeth Boyle were sent by Mother Seton to found a community of the Emmitsburg Sisters of Charity in New York. It was the second branch of the new American institute, the first being at Philadelphia (1814). They took charge of the orphanage, a small wooden building at Prince and Mott Streets. In the early thirties, a young ladies' academy, St. Mary's, begun shortly afterwards, was located in Grand Street, and then transferred to East Broadway, where three generations of the young women of the old East Side of New York, now the heart of its Ghetto, were educated.
Meanwhile at the motherhouse at Emmitsburg negotiations were in progress for affiliation with the sisters of Charity in France. In consequence there had been for some time a tendency to abandon certain customs observed there, because these changes were required by the French superiors; for example, the sisters in charge of boys' asylums were everywhere to be withdrawn. The measure threatened at that period the very existence of the New York orphanage. At this juncture, also, sisters could not be obtained from Emmitsburg to carry on the work of a projected and much-needed hospital in New York, the St. Vincent's of today. The correspondence that ensued between Archbishop Hughes and Father Deluol, the director of the sisterhood, in relation to these matters, resulted in a notification that all the sisters were to be recalled to Emmitsburg from New York in July of the same year. This and other circumstances proved to the archbishop the necessity to supply the needs of the diocese. In 1846, therefore, aproposition to that effect was made to the Emmitsburg sisters, and the matter was amicably arranged. Those who wished to continue in New York were dispensed from the vow of obedience to their former superior, and of the forty-five sisters than in the diocese, thirty-five remained (8 Dec., 1846).
Sister Elizabeth Boyle became in December, 1846, the first superior of the new community. The novitiate of the New York community was at once opened at St. James's Academy, 35 East Broadway. In the fourteen year it was removed to the new motherhouse on an state purchased at Mcgown's Pass, situated within the limits of the present Central Park. Here, in 1847,the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent had its foundation, In 1849 the affiliation of the Emmitsburg Sisters with the community in France took placeand in the same year a band of sisters was sent from Mount Saint Vincent to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The mission was most successful and in 1856, under Mother Xavier, a local community was formed of the sisters then labouring in the Diocese of Newark. Meanwhile in 1857 the "Old Mount" having been absorbed in Central Park, a new "Mount" rose on the east bank of the Hudson just below Yonkers, fourteen miles from the heart of the city. Here today are to be found the motherhouse of the community, the novitiate with a finely equipped training-school, and the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent.
The superiors succeeding Mother Elizabeth Boyle have been, Mother Jerome Ely, for over fifty years a prominent factor in New York's Catholic educational and charitable work; Mother Angela Hughes, sister of archbishop Hughes; Mother Regina Lawless, Mother Ambrosia Sweeney, Mother Rosina Wightman, Mother Mary Rose Dolan, Mother Melita McClancy and Mother Jesepha Cullen. Some idea of the growth in numbers of this community and of the importance of its present activities may be learned from the following statistics for 1908. It counts about 1400 members who conduct missions in the Dioceses of Albany, Brooklyn and Harrisburg as well as in the Archdiocese of New York. These establishments comprise 20 academies; 73 parochial schools with about 50,000 pupils; 5 asylums with 1800 orphans; high schools approved by the State; several homes containing 600 children; 11 hospitals in which 12,000 patients were treated during the year; 1 home accommodating 270 aged poor; an industrial school and a protectory with 1620 girls; a foundling asylum with 3340 children and 554 needy and homeless mothers; 2 small day nurseries caring for 100 little ones, and a retreat for the insane with 150 patients.
The superior general is the Archbishop of New York, and the community is governed by a council consisting of the mother superior and her three assistants. all residing at the motherhouse. to which the seventy-four missions are subordinate. These sisters retain the black cap and religious dress adopted by Mother Seton when she founded the American Sisters of Charity. They follow the Rule of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul with some slight modifications. On 20 June, 1847, the Holy See extended to them all the privileges, Indulgences, and other spiritual graces already granted to the community of the Sisters of Charity at Emmitsburg.
Mary Ambrose Dunphy.
Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth (Mother-house at Convent Station, near Morristown, New Jersey).—A community founded at Newark, in 1859, by Mother Mary Xavier Mehegan, who for twelve years previously had been a member of the Sisters of Charity, of St. Vincent de Paul in New York. In 1858 Bishop Bayley, of Newark, applied to the superior at Mount Saint Vincent's, New York, for sisters to form a separate mother-house in his diocese. Sister Mary Xavier, who was in charge of St. Mary's, Newark, was at his request appointed superior of the new foundation, with Sister Mary Catherine Nevin assistant. The habit and the constitutions of the Sisters of Charity in New York were retained. On 29 September, 1859, the new community was formally opened in St. Mary's, Newark, the first superior general being the Reverend Bernard J. McQuaid, later Bishop of Rochester, New York. In less than a year the first Catholic hospital in New Jersey was opened at St. Mary's, Newark. On 2 July, 1860, the mother-house was removed to the old Chegaray mansion at Madison, which had recently been vacated by Seton Hall College. An academy was opened the same year and named St. Elizabeth's, in honour of Mother Elizabeth Seton, the foundress of the American Sisters of Charity. Bishop Bayley had strongly advocated a change in the head-dress of the sisters. This, however, was not carried into effect until 1874, when the black cap adopted by Mother Seton was replaced by a white one with a black veil. To accommodate the rapidly growing community the mother-house and academy were removed in 1880 to Convent Station, near Morristown.
The principal work of the sisters is teaching, but they also labour for the poor and the sick in various charitable institutions. According to the report for 1907, there are 1073 of these sisters in the Dioceses of Newark, Trenton, and Hartford, and the Archdioceses of New York and Boston. They have one college, six academies, one preparatory school for small boys, sixty-seven parochial schools with 40,100 pupils, five orphanages, five hospitals, one home for incurables, one home for the aged, one foundling asylum, and two day nurseries. Their principal educational centre is at Convent Station, where there are schools of primary, grammar, high school, and college grades. The college course was founded in 1899 for the higher education of women. Students are admitted by examination or by certificates from approved academies or high schools. The courses of study are partially elective and lead to the degrees of B.A. and M.A. In 1907 the college library contained 20,000 volumes. The college has no endowment. In connection with the college department is a School of Pedagogy requiring two years of college work for admission. The High School, the School of Pedagogy, and the College are registered by the New Jersey State Board of Education and by the Regents of the University of the State of New York. At the mother-house of the community is a normal training school for the young sisters.
FLYNN, The Catholic Church in New Jersey (Morristown, 1904); Catholic Directory (1908).
Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth.
Sisters of Charity (St. John, New Brunswick), founded in 1854 by Bishop, subsequently Archbishop, Connolly. Two years before this the bishop had sent Miss Honora Conway (Mother Mary Vincent) to the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity in New York to prepare for the foundation of a local community. The cholera epidemic of 1854 left many orphans in St. John and other parts of the province. When Miss Conway had finished her novitiate she returned to St. John and in a short time was joined by four other young ladies for whom Bishop Connolly drew up rules, and thus the congregation began. The care the orphans and aged poor, and the Christian education of the young is the work undertaken and successfully carried out by these sisters. In St. John they have an orphanage for girls, a home for the aged, and at Silver Falls a Boys' Industrial School. The sisters teach in the public schools, and the entire education of the Catholic girls of the city is in their hands. From their High School the pupils enter the Provincial Normal School and the New Brunswick University. The congregation has houses and schools in many places in the diocese and also takes charge of an orphanage in the Diocese of Prince Albert. The mother-house and novitiate of this congregation are at St. John, N.B.
Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a congregation begun by five young women in Dublin, Ireland, 8 December, 1831, with the purpose of devoting themselves to the service of God in the education of children. They opened a school in North Ann Street, Dublin, on 19 March, 1832. Eager for more complete self-sacrifice, they resolved to leave their native land, and chose Philadelphia, U.S.A., for their field of labour, arriving there friendless and penniless, on 4 September, 1833. The Reverend T. J. Donoghoe, pastor of St. Michael's Church, who had been seeking suitable teachers for his parochial school, heard of these strangers, and with the permission of Archbishop Kenrick, employed them, and drew up a rule of life for their approval. As they organized themselves into a community under this rule, Father Donoghoe is rightly called the founder of this sisterhood with Mary Frances Clarke the first superior, and Margaret Mann the assistant and mistress of novices. On 1 November, 1833, they received the title, Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1843 the congregation left the flourishing vineyard of the East, to do pioneer work, and accepted the urgent invitation of Bishop Loras of Dubuque, Iowa, to settle in his diocese whither he also called Father Donoghoe to be his vicar-general. The mother-house of the congregation has since that time been located in Dubuque. A decree of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars approved the rules in 1877, and on 26 April, 1885, Leo XIII confirmed this. The work of the sisters is that of education; they engage in no other. They had in September, 1907, one thousand members having under their direction 25,000 children.
Mary Cecilia Dougherty.
Sisters of Charity of Providence.—The community of Sisters of Providence, or, more accurately, Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor, was founded in Montreal, Canada, by Bishop Bourget and Madame Jean Baptiste Gamelin (Marie Emélie Eugénie Tavernier), 25 March, 1843. With the approbation of the religious and civil authorities Madame Gamelin had for some time been sheltering in her own house a number of infirm and poor old women. After a voyage to Europe Bishop Bourget wished to bring to Montreal some French Sisters of Charity, but the project came to nothing, and he decided to appeal to the young women of his own diocese. On 25 March, 1843, in the chapel of the first asylum in Montreal seven sisters received the religious habit at his hands. The new institution developed rapidly. Its object is to provide for the poor and sick spiritual and temporal relief, to shelter children and the aged, to visit the homes of the poor and the ill, to shelter the infirm and the homeless, to maintain dispensaries for the needy, and to instruct the young. The rule of the Institute of Providence was definitively approved by Leo XIII 12 September, 1900.
The community numbers about 1600 religious with more than eighty establishments, of which the principal in Montreal are the mother-house and the Gamelin Asylum, the Longue-Pointe Refuge, the Hospital for Incurables, the Home for Deaf Mutes, the Bourget Asylum, and the Auclair Asylum. Outside the Diocese of Montreal there are foundations of these sisters in the dioceses of Quebec, Ottawa, Trois-Rivières, Saint-Hyacinthe, New Westminster, Valleyfield, Joliette, Vancouver, Alberta, and Saskatchewan in Canada; and in San Francisco, Oregon City, Burlington, Great Falls, Helena, Boise, and Manchester in the United States. The general administrative body, which is located at the mother-house in Montreal, is composed of the superior general, four assistants, a secretary, and a treasurer. The community comprises seven provinces: Montreal, Hochelaga, Joliette, Trois-Rivières, Washington, Montana, and Oregon.
Vie de Mère Gamelin, by a Religious of her Order (Montreal, 1900); AUCLAIR, Vie de Mère Caron (Montreal, 1908).
Elie J. Auclair.
Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, a congregation founded in 1803 by Canon Triest, who was known as "the St. Vincent de Paul of Belgium", for he was the founder as well of the Brothers of St. John of God, and the Sisters of the Infant Jesus. When curé of Lovendeghem he laid the foundations of this congregation, and gave up his living to devote himself to training its members. He obtained the first papal recognition in 1806 and in 1816 he went to Rome to get the final approbation, which he received by Brief on September 9th of that year. The mother-house is at Ghent and there are forty branch-houses. The congregation is one of the largest in Belgium. In 1889 some of the sisters at the request of the Belgian Government went to the Congo Missions in Africa, and founded several houses there. In 1895 they went to India and opened two boarding-schools in the Punjab, and one in Ceylon. In 1888, at the invitation of the late Cardinal Vaughan, the sisters went to England and founded a large convent at Tottington near Manchester. Their principal work is teaching in their training-colleges, boarding and day-schools, and orphanages; they also nurse the infirm; they are inclosed and there are no lay-sisters. The interior spirit is one of simplicity, devotion and zeal for the salvation of souls. The congregation has over a thousand members. The habit is white with a black scapular for the professed, the novices wearing a white veil and scapular. The novitiate lasts a year.
FELLER, Biog. univ. (1848), VIII; STEELE, Convents of Great Britain (London, 1892); HEIMBUCHER, Die Orden und Kongregationen (Paderborn, 1907).
Francesca M. Steele.
Sisters of Charity of St. Louis.—This congregation was founded at Vannes in Brittany, in 1803, by Madame Molé, née de Lamoignan, for the education of poor girls, at the suggestion of Bishop de Pancemont, of Vannes, who was her director. In 1805 Pius VII blessed the undertaking, but the final approbation of Rome was not obtained till 1840. The founder was elected superior for life as Mère St. Louis. There were at first no lay sisters, but finding this plan did not answer, Oblates of St. Louis were selected to act in this capacity, but they are not allowed to take vows until they have been ten years in the community; they then, like the choir-sisters, take a fourth vow of stability, when they have reached the age of forty. The interior spirit of the congregation is one of penitence and mortification. Its work is the education of poor girls who live in orphanages attached to their convents, and to support these orphanages the sisters have pay schools. The congregation is under the government of a mother-general and the bishop, or a superior appointed by the bishop. The sisters had twenty houses in France, most of which were in Brittany, but all their schools were closed by the Government; the greater number of the sisters in consequence went to Canada, where they met with a hospitable reception, and established fourteen houses. In 1898 they went to England, and opened a house at Minehead in Dorsetshire; they have since made a foundation at Glastonbury and another at Frome. The novitiate lasts two years.
STEELE, Convents of Great Britain (London, 1902).
Francesca. M. Steele.
Sisters of Charity of St. Paul.—These sisters who now add (of Chartres) to their title to distinguish them from another congregation of the same name, were founded at Chartres in 1704 by Monsignor Maréchaut, a theologian of the Cathedral of Chartres, assisted by Mlle de Tilly and Mlle de Tronche. Their first house formerly belonged to a sabot-maker, and this gave them the name of "Les Soeurs Sabotiers", by which they were originally known. They devote themselves to teaching, nursing, visiting the poor and taking care of orphans, the old and infirm, and the insane. There are no lay-sisters, but every sister must be prepared to undertake any kind of work. The interior spirit is a love of sacrifice and labor for the spiritual and temporal good of others. The postulancy lasts from six to nine months, the novitiate a year, after which the sisters take vows annually for three years, and then perpetual simple vows. The congregation was dispersed under the Commune at the French Revolution, but it was restored by Napoleon I, who gave the sisters a monastery at Chartres, which originally belonged to the Jacobins, from which they became known as "Les Soeurs de St. Jacques". They settled in England in 1847 at the invitation of Cardinal Wiseman. In 1907 they had fifty-six houses in various towns. Their work in England is mainly educational, schools being attached to all their houses; the English branch is under the government of a mother general. Until 1902 they had over two hundred and fifty houses in France where, besides various kinds of schools, they undertook asylums for the blind, the aged, and the insane, hospitals, dispensaries, and crèches. Since that date more than one hundred and sixty of these schools have been closed, also thirty of the hospitals, military and civil, in the French colonies, three convents at Blois and a hospice at Brie. On the other hand they have in the meanwhile opened five or six hospitals in the French colonies, two hospitals and three elementary schools in the Philippines, and three educational houses in Siam.
STEELE, Convents of Great Britain (London, 1902).
Francesca M. Steele.
Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy, a congregation founded in Holland in 1832 by the Rev. John Zwijsen, pastor of Tilburg, aided by Mary M. Leijsen, for the instruction of children and the betterment of a people deprived of spiritual aid by the disastrous effects of the Reformation. The See of Utrecht had been vacant for about three hundred years when, on the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in Holland in 1853, Bishop John Zwijsen, of Gerra, was made Archbishop of Utrecht and Primate of Holland. He found no Catholic institutions for the education of girls in this vast diocese, neither were there any teaching orders, with the exception of his humble congregation. The founder's accession to the See gave fresh impetus to his cherished work, and from this time the congregation spread rapidly throughout Holland and Belgium. There is now hardly a city of the Netherlands that has not one or more of its communities. Among these institutions are homes for the aged and infirm, the blind, the mutes and also hospitals. The Rules were approved by Gregory XVI in 1843, and Pius IX approved the congregation in 1848. About the middle of the eighteenth century, when the cholera was raging in Holland, the heroic charity of the sisters won the recognition of King William III who conferred decorations of honour on the congregation. It has three houses in England devoted to school and hospital work. In 1874 the first house in the United States was founded at Baltic, Connecticut, where there is a Parochial school and an academy for young ladies. The congregation has other houses at Willimantic and Taftville where the same work is carried on. In 1907 St. Joseph's community of Willimantic donated, one of the convent buildings for a city hospital, which from the outset proved a success. In 1894 the congregation took charge of the leper settlement, city and military hospitals of Paramaribo, South America; and in East India, the sisters are doing missionary work among the natives. In December, 1907, this congregation had 2621 professed members, 488 aspirants and novices and 102 houses. The number of schoolchildren enrolled was estimated at 54,300; the sick, aged and infirm cared for 3446.
Mother Aloysio.