The Women & Spirit Exhibit

On Saturday, March 13, about 30 of our Sisters took a bus trip to Washington, D.C. for the Women and Spirit Exhibit to see the history of religious life in the United States.  It was truly fascinating and I would like to share some pictures with you.

  This is what we saw as we entered the exhibit.  You can see different Sisters engaged in different activities during different generations.  You cannot see the writing too well, but what it says is:  "Women &Spirit:  Discover a world few have seen, but millions have shared."  These words are so true.  As we all go through our spiritual journeys in life, many Sisters have accompanied us, whether it be in the classroom, in a hospital bed, an orphanage, a parish, or in prayer ministries.  A movie that played and I did not get a picture talked about Sisters and 90 plus orphans who were caught in a hurricane in Galveston, Texas.  Their orphanage was right on the beach.  The Sisters did all they could to save the orphans and lost their lives trying.  Only 3 boys survived.  Many others in the city had died in that hurricane also. 

This is Sister Marianne Cope, an immigrant from Germany.  Let me explain what she has to do with our own congregation, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.  Our congregation was founded by a Mother Frances Bachmann, a widow with small children at the time of our founding.  We were originally under the Bishop of Philadelphia.  Soon the Bishops of Buffalo, and Syracuse asked Mother Frances for Sisters to help in their respective dioceses.  Mother Frances sent Sisters.  Because we were under the Bishop and not the Pope, the Bishops of those two New York dioceses said the Sisters were now under them and no longer a part of our community, which was a heartbreak to Mother Frances and all the Sisters following her.  Marianne Cope was part of the Syracuse group, but many of us consider ourselves related and we hope to all be one again some day.

Sister Marianne Cope was Superior General of the Syracuse Franciscans and volunteered to work with Father Damian in Hawaii giving nursing care to the lepers there when she was still in office.  She is well remembered in Hawaii even to this day.  She has since been called "blessed" by the Catholic Church, and all of her Sisters hope to see her declared a canonized saint someday soon.

Image via Wikipedia

This is an actual photo of Sister Marianne Cope taken from Wikipedia. 

I tried to get these two pictures side by side but with no luck.  I believe this is the old habit of the Holy Cross Sisters.  Above, you can see how it looked in the front.  Below, you can see it from the back along with the machine that helped to put the creases in it.  The exhibit also gave the story of the habits.  Many times these were the dress of the poor whom the Sisters ministered to in Europe centuries before, but the habit did not change with the times nor the geography, so they looked out of place when they came to America.  As times changed, the habit became a symbol of being a Sister or nun.  So, congregations such as ours designed a habit that looked like a "Sister."  To the then modern 19th and 20th century Sister, the habit was a symbol of their vow of poverty.  They had no other clothes besides the habit, and basically had a Sunday habit, a work habit, and a cleaning habit.  They had no other clothes except a shawl to keep them warm in the winter. 

The exhibit also distinguished between the term "Sister" and "nun."  Technically a "nun" is a Catholic religious woman who lives in the cloistered.  Their main work is prayer and they may do other things such as farming, sewing, making altar breads, or other means to help support themselves.  The "Sister" is a Catholic religious woman who is engaged in active ministries outside of the confines of the convent.  Modern day usage usually interchanges these two words without distinction.

I am going to stop here.  I will show you more pictures later.