The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul were founded on May 11, 1849, when the four founding Sisters of Charity, arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia from New York. They came in response to a request by then Halifax Archbishop William Walsh. By 1856 the order, in Halifax, was accepted as a separate congregation, by Pope Pius IX, and took on their new official name. The order is part of the Sisters of Charity Federation.
The areas of education, health care, pastoral ministry and social services are still paramonunt, though the ways in which the sisters work within a given field has changed. While the congregation once operated hospitals, schools, senior citizen homes and the only women's university in Canada, they now serve in a variety of areas in Canada and throughout the eastern United States, in Bermuda, Peru and the Dominican Republic.
The religious order founded Canada's best known Women's university, now co-educational, Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A long tradition ended in 2006 when Sister Sheelagh Martin, a chemistry professor, retired as the last member of the congregation to teach there.
The Motherhouse of the Order is located in Halifax in the Rockingham area, along the Bedford Basin and highway. The original building, which also incorporated Mount Saint Vincent Academy and College (the precursors to the current University) was built around the time of the Academy's founding in 1873 and destroyed by fire in 1951. Rebuilt separately from in the early 1950s, it housed retired sisters of the order as well as visiting religious and laypeople. It also housed for Mount Saint Vincent University a student residence called Vincent Hall until the residence was closed by the University in 1992. The building, once the largest in all of Atlantic Canada, was demolished in 2008 and the property is slated for redevelopment.
In 1975, at the beatification of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, there were approximately 1700 sisters in the organization and 97 missions.[1] Today, there are approximately 500 sisters[2]