Cathedral school
In 1843, Bishop Mathias Loras of the Diocese of Dubuque, Iowa, who had been visiting Philadelphia, invited the sisters to come teach in the Iowa Territory. So the pioneer BVMs, by then nineteen in number, moved to Dubuque, Iowa, and began to teach the children of settlers, lead miners, and farmers. They opened a new boarding school, St. Mary’s Academy, which was the predecessor of the St. Raphael Cathedral school. They were the first women religious in the territory and would soon open many additional schools.