The congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet is composed of almost 1,200 vowed sisters who minister in four provinces and two vice provinces. The Congregational Center is located in Sunset Hills, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.
In the year 1834 Most Rev. Joseph Rosati, Bishop of St. Louis, Missouri, called at the mother-house of the Sisters of St. Joseph at Lyon and asked Mother St. John Fontbonne, the superior, to send a colony of sisters to America to undertake instruction of deaf-mute children. The financial aid necessary was obtained through the Countess de la Roche Jacquelin. The bishop accepted six sisters to instruct the children, and in addition, two others to teach the deaf.[1]
On 17 January 1836 the first six sisters set sail from Le Havre, France on the ship Natchez. After seven weeks at sea, they arrived in New Orleans March 5, where they were met by the Bishop of St. Louis and Rev. Timon, afterwards Bishop of Buffalo. Bishop Rosati had arranged for them to stay with the Ursuline Sisters in the city and met with them the next day. (He planned to travel north with them to St. Louis.) The sisters enjoyed the hospitality of the Ursulines for two weeks, learning much about life in the United States. The sisters also told them to disguise their religious habit when going abroad and while traveling to St. Louis as there was anti-Catholic feeling among some residents.[1]
The sisters boarded the steamer, the George Collier, traveled up the Mississippi and reached St. Louis on 25 March 1836. Through Holy Week the sisters resided with the Daughters of Charity, who had a hospital near the Cathedral. On April 7, three of the sisters, accompanied by Bishop Rosati and Father Fontbonne, travelled by boat for Cahokia, Illinois, a former French colonial town, where they opened a school for French and Creole settlers at the request of a Vincentian missionary.[2] On September 12, the remaining sisters settled in a log cabin in the village of Carondelet, about five miles south of the city of St. Louis. At the time the sisters arrived at St. Louis, this humble house was occupied by the Sisters of Charity, who cared for a few orphans there who were soon transferred to a new building. Many institutions have been started from the origin of these sisters and continue their good works. St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf, St. Joseph’s Academy; Fontbonne College, now Fontbonne University, all were founded among the sisters at the convent at Carondelet.[1]
In 1847 the first foundation outside St. Louis was made in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, followed shortly by foundations in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (1851); Hamilton, Ontario (1852); Wheeling, West Virginia (1853); and Canandaigua (1854); Flushing (Brentwood)(1856); Rochester; and Buffalo, all in New York state, which had received many Irish Catholic immigrants. In 1851 Bishop Joseph Cretin went to Carondelet to ask Mother Celestine to send the Sisters of St. Joseph to his new diocese in St. Paul, Minnesota; four sisters reached there by steamboat on 3 November. In 1853 Bishop McCloskey requested sisters for Cohoes, New York. On April 15, 1858, one German, one Irish, and two native-born sisters arrived by train in Oswego, New York in the midst of a snowstorm, to establish a school for Catholic immigrants.[2] In 1869 the Flushing community sent three pioneer sisters to Ebensburg, Pennsylvania.[3]
Because of the rapid growth of the institute and the increasing demand for sisters from all parts of the United States, the superiors of the community by 1860 had to figure out how to give stability and uniformity to the growing congregation. They called a general chapter in May 1860, to which representatives from every congregational house in America were called. Mother St. John Facemaz was elected first superior general for a term of six years. Shortly afterward, she traveled to Rome to present a copy of the Constitution for Vatican approval. In September 1863, Pope Pius IX issued a degree of commendation. Final approbation was received, dated May 16, 1877. This approval established the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet as a congregation of pontifical right, and unified their communities in various dioceses with the mother-house at Carondelet (now part of St. Louis, Missouri).
During the Civil War, the order sent nuns to serve as Army nurses. According to Civil War medical historian George Adams, Dorothea Dix, the head of Army nurses distrusted them; her anti-Catholicism undermined her ability to work with Catholic nurses, lay or religious.[4][5] In 1910 the congregation divided into four provinces. The Sisters are known for their work in education and health care, and their activism in opposing the death penalty.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Savannah were established at Savannah in 1867, in charge of the boys' orphanage, and soon afterward became an independent diocesan congregation. In 1876 the orphanage was transferred to Washington, Georgia, and with it the mother-house of the congregation. In 1912 the Sisters opened an academy for women in Augusta which became Mount Saint Joseph. They eventually moved the mother house to Augusta, Georgia. In 1922 the Sisters voted to incorporate themselves into the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet, becoming the Augusta Province.
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet Saint Louis, Missouri
The St. Louis, Missouri Province comprises the houses of the congregation in the Archdioceses of St. Louis and Chicago, and the Dioceses of St. Joseph, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Peoria, Belleville, Alton, Denver, Marquette, Green Bay, Mobile, and the Diocese of Oklahoma. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Georgia joined as a separate province in 1922 and became part of the St. Louis Province in 1961.
In St. Louis, Missouri the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet St. Louis sponsor Saint Joseph Institute for the Deaf,[6] Saint Joseph's Academy,[7] Fontbonne University, and Ascension Health;[8] and in Kansas City, Missouri, they sponsor Saint Teresa Academy[9] and Avila University.
Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet and Consociates, St. Paul Province
In 1851, four Sisters arrived in the village of St. Paul, Minnesota, to establish the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province. A log cabin became the first site of Saint Joseph's Academy in early November 1851, a day and boarding school for girls.[10] In 1853, in response to the cholera epidemic, the sisters turned the school into the first site of St. Joseph's Hospital, which was also the state of Minnesota's first hospital.
The growth of the St. Paul congregation began with the entrance of its first postulants, Ellen Ireland and her cousin Ellen Howard, in the summer of 1858. By then the pattern of response to need had been firmly set with the opening of St. Joseph Academy in St. Paul, Long Prairie Indian Mission, St. Anthony's School in Minneapolis, and St. Joseph Hospital and Cathedral School in St. Paul. Orphans were taken care of in all these institutions.
In 2016, the St. Paul Province celebrated its 175th year. Its ministries range from young adult spirituality to immigrant and refugee services. Through these ministries, St. Paul Sisters and Consociates strive to foster the common good through advocacy, creative arts, education, healthcare, social service, and spirituality.
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet Albany Province
The Albany Province (formerly Troy, New York) is formed of the houses established in the Dioceses of Albany and Syracuse, New York. The Albany Province of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet founded and sponsor the College of St. Rose, Albany, New York, named in honor of St. Rose of Lima, the first canonized saint in the Americas.[11]
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet Los Angeles Province
Los Angeles is the youngest of the four provinces of the Congregation of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Already well known in the eastern part of the country with provinces established in St. Louis, St. Paul, and Albany, the Sisters of St. Joseph received an appeal from two pioneer bishops in the West. Santa Fe bishop John Baptist Lamy, and the newly installed bishop of Tucson, John Baptist Salpointe, wrote to Carondelet in the late 1860s asking for sisters to establish a school in Tucson, Arizona.
Seven Sisters began the long journey to the west in April 1870, traveling on the newly completed transcontinental railroad to San Francisco, by steamer to San Diego, and by covered wagon across the American Desert to Tucson, Arizona. Their first school, the future St. Joseph’s Academy, opened on June 6, 1870, eleven days after their arrival in Tucson.
Ministries spread rapidly from this early beginning with schools opening in Arizona and California. Close to the Sisters’ hearts was the education and care of their beloved Native Americans. By 1873, the Sisters had opened a school for the Papago Indians at San Xavier del Bac. Within a few years, they were ministering at Fort Yuma, St. Anthony’s in San Diego, St. Boniface School in Banning, and St. John’s Mission School in Komatke. When Bishop Salpointe opened St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson in 1880, health care became an important part of the Sisters’ ministry. Over the years, the Sisters sponsored and operated hospitals in Arizona, California, Washington, and Idaho until recent developments in health care led them to transfer ownership and sponsorship to a Catholic health system.
As the majority of ministries increased in California, Los Angeles was selected as seat of the western province and established in 1903. Academies were established as early as 1882, Mount St. Mary’s College (now University) was founded in 1925, and Sisters were teaching in parish schools in five states. Work with the deaf, a treasured tradition since the first days in St. Louis, flourished for many years in Oakland and San Francisco. In 1925, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Lewiston, Idaho, joined the Carondelet congregation. In 2011, the Sisters of the Vice Province of Japan joined the Los Angeles Province as a region.
From the first days in Arizona, education and health care merged naturally into other forms of care of the dear neighbor. Over the years, and especially after Vatican II, the Sisters’ work has expanded and diversified, including parish service, adult education, spiritual direction and retreat work, direct service of the poor, and justice activities.
Sponsored institutions: Academy of Our Lady of Peace, San Diego; Carondelet High School, Concord, CA; St. Joseph High School, Lakewood, CA (philosophical sponsorship); St. Joseph Joshi Gakuen, Tsu, Japan; St. Mary’s Academy, Inglewood, CA; Mount St. Mary’s University, Los Angeles; St. Joseph Center, Venice, CA.
Selected province works: A Friendly Manor, Alexandria House, Circle the City, Get on the Bus, House of Yahweh, Villa Maria House of Prayer.
The congregation established foundations in Hawaii in 1938, in Japan in 1956 and in Peru in 1962. These have flourished and attracted native-born members. The Hawaii community became a vice-province in 1956, the Japan and Peru communities in 1978.[12]
Governance
The superior general and four general councillors, elected every six years by the whole congregation, form the general governing body, assisted by a superior provincial and four provincial councillors in each province. The provincial officers are appointed by the general officers every three years, as are the local superiors of all the provinces.
In each provincial house, as in the mother-house, a novitiate is established. The term of postulantship extends from three to six months, the term of novitiate two years, after which annual vows are taken for a period of five years, when perpetual vows are taken. All are received on the same footing, all enjoy the same privileges, and all are subject to the same obedience which assigns duties according to ability, talent, and aptitude.
Although an interchange of members of the various provinces is allowed and made use of for general or particular needs, the autonomy of each province is safeguarded. The constitutions, while establishing on a solid basis the idea of a general government, allow no small share of local initiative and carefully provide for local needs. In this way too much centralization or peril to establishments working in accordance with local and special exigencies is guarded against.