Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/673

 CHARITY

609

CHARITY

tion of the young is the work undertaken and success- fully carried out by these sisters. In St. Jolm 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 scl Is, and the entire education

of the Catholic girls of the city is in their hands. From their High School the pupils enter the Provin- cial Normal School and the New Brunswick Inivcr- sity. 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 de- voting themselves to the service of God in the educa- tion of children. They opened a school in North Ann Street, Dublin, on 19 March, 1S32. Eager for more complete self-sacrifice, tiny 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. Tin- 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 per- mission 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, ami Margaret Mann the assistant and mis- tress of novices. On 1 November, 1833, they re- ceived the title. Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1843 the congregation left the flourishing vineyard of the F.ast, 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 lie' 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 con- firmed this. Tin' work of the sisters is that of edu- cation; they engage in no other. They had in Sep- tember, 1907, .hi, thousand members having under their direction 25,000 children.

M \ry Cecilia Dougherty.

Sisters of Charity of Providence. — The com- munity of Sisters of Providence, or, more accurately, Daughters of Charity. Servants of the Poor, was founded in Montreal, I 'anada, by Bishop Bourget and Madame Jean Baptiste Gamelin (Marie Emedie Eu- genie Ta vernier), 25 March, 1843. With the approba- tion 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. < hi 25 March. 1843, ill the chapel Of the first asylum in Montreal seven Bisters reci ived the religious habit at his hands. The new institution developed rapidly. Its object is to provide for the poor and sick spiritual and tem- poral relief, to shelter children and tin aged, to visit

the homes of the poor and the ill, to shelter the infirm

and the homeless, lo maintain dispensaries for the needy, and to instruct the young. The rule of ih. Institute of Providence was definitively approved by

Leo XIII 12 September. 1'.

The community numbers about 1600 religious with more than eighty establishments, of which the prin- cipal in Montreal are the mother-house and the Game lin Asylum, the Longue Pointe Refuge, tin- Hospital for Incurables, the Home for Deaf Mutes, the Bourget III — 39

Asylum, and the. Auclair Asylum. Outside the Dio- cese of Montreal there are foundations of these sisters in the dioceses of Quebec, Ottawa, Trois-Rivieres, Saint-Hyacinthe, New Westminster, Yalleyfield. Joli- ette, Vancouver, Alberta, and Saskatchewan in Can- ada; 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-Rivieres, Washington, Montana, and Oregon.

Fie de Mire Oamelin, by a Religious of her ( inter (Montreal, 1900); Auclair, Vie de MtreCaron (Montreal, 1908).

Elie J. Auclair.

Sisters of Charity* of Jesus and Mary -, a con- gregation 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 cure 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 lsoti 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 Man- chester. 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 tin- 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.

Felm i B (1848), VIII; Steele, Convents of

London, 1892 ; Heimbucher, Die Orden unit Konnrenationen (Paderborn, 1907).

Francesca M. Steele.

Sisters of Charity of St. Forts. — This congre- gation was founded at Vannes in Brittany, in 1803, by Madame Mole, ne'e de Lamoignan, for the educa- tion of poor girls, at the suggestion of Bishop de Pancemont, of Vannes, who was her director. In 1805 Pius VTI blessed the undertaking, but the final approbation of Rome was not obtained till 1840. The founder was elected superior for life as Mere St. Louis. There were at first no lay sisters, but finding this plan did not answer, < folates of St. Louis n ere -i 1. cted 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 interioi Bpirit 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 sup- port these orphanages the sifters have pay schools.

'I'he congregation is under the government of a mother-general and the bishop, or a superior ap- pointed by the bishop. 'I'he sisters had twenty

houses in nance, 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