Oblate/Tri-IHM: Highlights

Welcome to "Fresh Eyes," a presentation that we hope you will find both interesting and entertaining. We would like to think of our program as one event of our family reunion. Like all family reunions, ours brings together some relatives who haven't seen one another in years, and others who have never met before. It's time to reminisce about our shared history, to celebrate the stories of those who founded our family and to bring us up-to-date on all that has been going on in the various branches of the family. It's a time to share stories that may be unfamiliar to some and to raise questions that have always puzzled us.	Here's a family album to help us recall our shared beginnings. Some of our photos will capture the events and circumstances that led to the development of our four congregations; others will trace the shaping of our individual congregations. This album holds memories of the first one hundred years—from 1829 to 1929. From that point on we can rely on our living custodians of our stories with their vivid and fascinating memories. They will enrich us with their knowledge.
Oblates of Providence	Our album opens with the colony of Haiti, once the richest of the French Caribbean, but plundered and impoverished and wracked with oppression and violent revolution.
Fleeing from the violence, Elizabeth Clarisse Lange* arrived in the US and eventually came to Baltimore .*	Baltimore. She was fluent in French and Spanish and a person of some wealth. She was appalled at the US obsession with race, an attitude that attempted to rob her of her dignity. Elizabeth joined with other San Domingan refugees to form a French-speaking Catholic community of person of color.
With Marie Magdalene Balas she established a school for San Dominigan children and, in 1829, in collaboration with the Sulpician Father James Hector Joubert, she created the first religious congregation established by women of African descent. Four sisters constituted that first community: Elizabeth (now Mother Mary Lange), Marie Magdalene Balas, Marie Rose Boegue, and Theresa Maxis Duchemin.	Theresa Maxis Duchemin
Here are some of their early homes. Some Baltimore Catholics were hostile to the creation of this African American congregation.	But Bishop James Whitfield, supported its establishment, and assured Father Joubert that "It is not lightly but with reflection that I approved your project. I knew and saw the finger of God. I engage you, I command you even, to continue the work you have undertaken."
The sisters opened St Frances Academy, which continues today as the oldest continuously operating black Catholic school in the US.	Almost immediately the sisters accepted responsibility for orphaned children, the beloved "children of the house.”
Baltimore was not a very comfortable location for Catholic sisters of color. The slave markets operated busily at Fells' Point. At the same time Baltimore was the free black capital of the US, since so many freed slaves gravitated there from further South .	It was also the scene of Nativist attacks against Catholics; Baltimore well earned its nickname "Mobtown." In the years leading up to the Civil War, the Know Nothing party controlled Baltimore. As Catholics and as persons of color, the Oblates of Providence were doubly the targets of nativist hatred. Their ministry of educating African American children was particularly unpopular in a period during which some states labeled it a crime to teach an African American to read.
Other crises confronted the Oblate community. In 1832 a cholera epidemic devastated Baltimore. The Oblates responded generously to the need, nursing the sick at risk to themselves. One member, Sister Anthony, who was Theresa's mother, Betsy Duchemin, gave her life in serving other victims of the disease. As the years proceeded, fewer and fewer children were able to pay for their education and the congregation fell into financial straits.	By 1846 only eight students at the academy paid tuition. As one way to provide financial support for the congregation and its ministry, Mother Mary agreed to the request for the sisters to supervise the housekeeping at St. Mary's Seminary.
But by far the most crucial challenges the Oblates faced were the death of Father Joubert in 1841, the withdrawal of Sulpician support, and the indifference of the new bishop, Samuel Eccleston. Himself a part of the slave-holding community, Bishop Eccleston saw little benefit in the Oblates' existence. He responded to their difficulties by ordering that no new members were to be accepted and he suggested that the present members return to secular life where there was great need of good servants. Responding to efforts to rescue the Oblates from their plight he posed the notorious question, “Cui bono?” to what good?	Baltimore was also the center of US Catholic life in the first half of the nineteenth century and bishops and priests attended synods there. Two who visited the Oblate convent are crucial to the IHM story. Redemptorist Father Louis Gillet and Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere, of Detroit. The Bishop had persuaded Father Gillet to establish a mission in Monroe, Michigan. When Father Gillet set out to establish a religious community to educate the French-speaking girls there, he returned to Baltimore to invite the bilingual Theresa Maxis Duchemin to join him in this effort. Theresa believed that the Oblate Congregation was fated for extinction, so she agreed to the request, leaving the Oblates, moving to Monroe with another Oblate, Ann Constance (Charlotte Schaaf) and founding the IHM Congregation with Father Gillet.
Happily, Theresa was mistaken about the Oblates’ fate. The Redemptorist Thaddeus Anwander came to the Congregation’s rescue, re-established priestly assistance for the Oblates and supported their stabilization and their growth.	*The Civil War* years were difficult ones for the Oblate community, with the conflict beginning virtually on their doorstep. The first civilian deaths of the war were in Baltimore and battles between Union and Confederate supporters wrenched apart the order and peace of the city.
The Reconstruction years had their own challenges; so did the influx of poor European immigrants toward the end of the century. They displaced African-Americans from long-established occupations in Baltimore as throughout the eastern part of the country. During these years the Oblates extended their ministry to 25 US cities.	In 1900, the Oblates opened their first foreign mission in Havana, Cuba.
Missions in the Dominican Republic* and Costa Rica followed later.*	Costa Rica
The sisters also briefly served on Providence Island, near the Colombian coast. But the people of the island were being gravely mistreated by their rulers, and since the sisters were unable to prevent the cruelties imposed on the people, they withdrew from that mission.	Mother Mary Lange died in 1882, leaving her sisters a heritage of holiness and commitment to service. Today, the hope is that her canonization will inspire many others with her confidence in the loving and faithful providence of God and her devotion to all who suffer oppression.
Monroe IHM	As Mother Theresa Maxis journeys from Baltimore to Monroe, we turn the page of our family album to the original IHM foundation. The IHM founding location had been known as Frenchtown earlier in the century. The opportunity to work in a French-speaking milieu had a magnetic appeal for Theresa, who had inherited Mother Mary Lange’s preference for all things French. She was also drawn to the Redemptorist tradition, which had helped shape her religious life in Baltimore.
Theresa and Charlotte Schaaf were joined by Theresa Renault to form the first IHM community, gathering in their convent home for the first time on November 10, 1845. Shortly after they were joined by the fourth charter member, Josette Godfroy-Smyth.	The first decade of the IHM congregation was fairly peaceful, supported first by Redemptorist Louis Gillet and then by his confrere Egidius Smulders.
For years the “Young Ladies’ Academy” (later St. Mary’s Academy) of Monroe was the only Catholic boarding school in Michigan. The sisters in Monroe maintained Oblate tradition of welcoming orphans, the “children of the house”. Early on, the bilingual ministry of the Congregation was expanded to tri-lingual as the German school at St. Michael’s parish was opened.	The tranquil progress of the Congregation was disrupted in 1855 by the withdrawal of the Redemptorists from Monroe. Their departure was motivated by their inability to maintain community life and to finance their ministry. Their leaving enraged Bishop Lefevere, who retaliated by removing all traces of Redemptorist tradition from the IHM congregation. He appointed Edward Joos, a diocesan priest, to be the director.
All of this was most distressing to Mother Theresa. Soon the opportunity presented itself for the Congregation to return to the Redemptorist tradition.	An invitation arrived for the sisters to establish a mission at St. Joseph’s Susquehanna County in Pennsylvania in the one US diocese with a Redemptorist bishop, St. John Neumann. So the first IHM mission in PA was opened in 1858. Soon another invitation arrived to open a mission in Reading, PA. Theresa was eager to accept it, probably planning to move the entire congregation to Pennsylvania. Bishop Lefevere was unwilling to allow a further reduction of numbers in the Detroit diocese and so he refused. This led to a dramatic conflict and ultimately Lefevere banished Theresa to Pennsylvania. When Theresa and some of her Redemptorist friends wrote to the other sisters, urging them to come to Pennsylvania, Bishop Lefevere severed the Congregation in two, forbidding further contact between the sisters in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The IHMs who remained in Michigan struggled to maintain and expand their ministry. In fall 1859 they hired a lay faculty member to augment their teaching staff. She was Mary Harris, later to become famous as the dynamic labor organizer, Mother Jones, known as ‘the most dangerous woman in America.” Mary worked at the Academy for only one school year, but it is worth noting that the IHMs gave this giant of the US labor movement her first job in the US. The coming of the Civil War further burdened the IHM ministry, as prices went up and the number of boarders went down. The sisters nevertheless responded effectively to the needs of the times. They opened an orphanage for children of war victims, and in 1867 they established St. Augustine Negro School to advance the opportunities of African American children in the aftermath of the war.	During almost the entire second half of the nineteenth century, Father Joos was the director of the Monroe IHM congregation. The General Superiors were subject to his direction throughout the forty-four years of his leadership. During those years the Congregation expanded in membership and ministry. When Father Joos died in 1901, 230 sisters were educating 7500 students in 22 schools.
When Mother Mechtildis became superior in 1901 she was the first sister since Mother Theresa Maxis to exercise the full power of the office. A few years later in 1907, another essential of the IHM roots was restored when the Redemptorists returned as community chaplains.	In the first decade of the century, the IHM educational ministry expanded further with the chartering of St. Mary’s College Monroe in 1910. In 1927 the college was moved to Detroit, and renamed Marygrove.
The IHM educational ministry in Michigan was threatened in 1918 and 1920 when state constitutional amendments were proposed thst required all children to attend public school. Happily the public defeated the proposal. The balloting coincided with the first occasion that the IHM sisters voted. The Monroe pages of our album close with a tragedy and a rising from tragedy: the fire that destroyed St. Mary’s Academy in 1929 and the rebuilding of the Academy and Motherhouse in 1931-32	Still ahead are the many years of fruitful ministry in this country and in 7 overseas missions, starting in Puerto Rico.
*Immaculata IHMs*	Once again the travels of Mother Theresa mark a turning to new pages in our family album. She opened the first Pennsylvania IHM mission in summer 1858 at St. Joseph, Susquehanna County in Northeast Pennsylvania. The people of the area were Irish immigrants, who sought to overcome their poverty by farming the fertile land. Theresa wrote of the mission: “I cannot help expressing to you my satisfaction upon hearing that it is among the poor we are called, for that is exactly what we like.” As the immigrant population moved into the developing towns to work on canals, railroad and in coal mines, the IHM sisters followed in their service.
The Reading mission, founded in 1859, became the Pennsylvania IHM Motherhouse in 1864	In 1861 the sisters had established St. Alphonsus (later Laurel Hill) Academy in the railroad town Susquehanna. From that mission in 1868, Mother Theresa and Sister Celestine Renault left the congregation and traveled to the convent of the Grey Nuns in Ottawa. Theresa hoped that by petitioning from a neutral position she might be able to persuade Bishop Lefevere to reunite the two IHM congregations.
But her efforts were fruitless and she herself was banned from both the Michigan and the Pennsylvania congregations. Eventually, she returned to Ottawa as a guest of the Grey Nuns. She remained for sixteen years, until she was permitted to return to the West Chester motherhouse in 1885. The Diocese of Scranton was created in 1868 and in 1871 the first Scranton bishop, William O’Hara, separated the IHMs in his diocese from those remaining in the Philadelphia diocese. So Scranton, the third IHM Congregation came into existence.	One year after the separation of the Pennsylvania congregations, the motherhouse of the IHMs in the Philadelphia diocese was moved from Reading to West Chester. From that location, dozens of new missions were accepted for schools throughout the diocese. Responding to the needs of God’s people the sisters also maintained day nurseries, the Catholic Home Bureau for Dependent Children, and two settlement houses for Italian immigrants, Madonna House and L’Assunta House.
In 1885 the sisters joyfully welcomed Mother Theresa home to West Chester after her lengthy exile in Ottawa. She lived seven happy years with her sisters until her death in 1892 at the age of 82.	Coincidently, the IHM co-founder, Louis Gillet, also died in 1892, but not before learning that the congregation he had co-founded a half-century before was alive and thriving. The journeys that had separated him from the IHMs had ended in his becoming a Cistercian monk in Hautecombe, France.
Villa Maria Academy was opened in 1909; in 1920 it expanded its purview to Villa Maria College, presently Immaculata University.	In 1918 the city of Philadelphia was stricken with the influenza epidemic, claiming over 12,000 lives in the city. The sisters responded heroically, ministering to the ill all over the city and its surroundings. Of the 395 sisters who served in the crisis, 215 contracted the disease and nine sisters died as a result of their generous service.
The Immaculata sisters opened a new and very fruitful stage of their ministry in1922, when they established their first Latin American mission in Peru. Over the years the congregation expanded to other missions in Peru and in Chile. The sisters' dedication to the evangelization of Latin America was profound; more than 500 Immaculata IHMs have served in Latin America.	Scranton IHMs
When the Scranton IHMs became a separate congregation, there were only 12 members. Their ministry was directed to the working families of Northeast Pennsylvania towns--especially to the children of the coal and textile workers. Often the children themselves were employed as breaker boys and bobbin girls.	Because mining was such a dangerous occupation, there was need for orphanages; the sisters opened St. Patrick’s Orphanage in 1875. Tragically it burned in 1881, taking the lives of seventeen children. It was rebuilt and served the Scranton community until 1948.
Toward the end of the century, Scranton, as a busy railroad town, had a reputation as a center for prostitution and that seems to have led to a large number of abandoned babies. In 1890 the congregation accepted responsibility for St. Joseph’s Infant Home to care for those children. The many changing names of the institution over the century reflect its developing functions: the “foundling Hospital,” to the “Children’s and Maternity Hospital” to its present name:	*St. Joseph’s Center*, an Intermediate Care Facility for Mentally Retarded Persons.” Again in response to the problem of prostitution in Scranton, A VD clinic was opened at St. Joseph’s in the 1920s. The need for children in the region to work prevented many of them from attending school.
So in 1906 the sisters began to conduct evening classes for the “bobbin girls” and ”breaker boys” after their hard day’s work had been completed.	The Scranton IHMs were privileged to assist in the formation of new congregations in the early years of the twentieth century. The needs of Slovak and Lithuanian immigrants prompted the creation of the Sisters of St. Cyril and Methodius, the Sisters of St. Casimir and the Sisters of Jesus Crucified. In each case the Scranton IHM congregation provided spiritual and educational formation. The congregation also provided initial training for the Maryknoll Sisters, but when these decided to adopt a Dominican rule, the Vatican required that they begin their formation again. The IHM training didn’t take!
For the first 25 years of its existence, the Scranton Congregation remained entirely in Scranton diocese. When they finally accepted a distant mission in 1897, it was about as far away from Scranton as a US location can be: Tillamook, Oregon	This opened a Western mission field* that flourished for 75 years.*
In 1902 a new Motherhouse* was built.*	It was the home of Marywood Seminary.
It was also the birthplace of Marywood College, now Marywood University.	Marywood University
*Fire* destroyed the Motherhouse in 1971, miraculously with no loss of life.	In 1917, the IHM superior, Mother Gemaine* visited Puerto Rico with the idea of establishing a mission there.*
However, it was not until 1964 that such a mission initiated the Scranton congregation’s ministry in Latin America, followed the next year by the opening of missions in Peru.	Meanwhile, beginning in 1926, the sisters devoted themselves to the home missions in North Carolina and especially to the education of African American children there.
Also in 1926 the sisters undertook a new field of congregation ministry with their staffing of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. The hospital is now part of the Catholic Health East system.	There’s our album for the first 100 years. We hope it has evoked some memories or given you some new information that will help you to enjoy our presentation.
Fresh Eyes	Acknowledgements