School Sisters of Notre Dame
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
School Sisters of Notre Dame is a worldwide order of Roman Catholic nuns devoted to primary, secondary, and post-secondary education.
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[edit] Founding and growth
The order was founded in Bavaria in 1833 during a time of poverty and illiteracy. Its founder, Caroline Gerhardinger, known by the religious name of Mary Theresa of Jesus, formed a community with two other women in Neunburg vorm Wald to teach the poor.
In 1847 Mother Theresa and five companion sisters went to America to aid a group of German immigrants in rural Pennsylvania, eventually travelling as far west as the Mississippi River and establishing several missions for their order.
More than 4,300 School Sisters of Notre Dame work in thirty-five countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
[edit] Governance
The Constitution of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, approved by Pope Pius IX in 1865, allowed Mother Theresa and her successors, instead of local bishops, to govern the order. Today, the order has US motherhouses in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; Mankato, Minnesota; Waterdown, Ontario; Wilton, Connecticut; Dallas, Texas; and Chicago, Illinois. Motherhouses are located in Europe and South America as well, and the Generalate of the Congregation is found in Rome, Italy.
[edit] Nun Study
678 members of the order in the U.S. are participating in the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer's disease initiated in 1986. The homogeneous life style of the nuns makes them an ideal study population. Convent archives have been made available to investigators as a resource on the history of participants.
