Different times, same mission

from The Columbus Dispatch

After 150 years, the Sisters of Mercy still dedicate their lives to serving the needy

By Meredith Heagney

CINCINNATI -- In 1858, they were a group of 11 young immigrant women who came to America to live in poverty so they could help others who had it even worse.

Today, the local order of the Sisters of Mercy operates a range of services that includes schools, hospitals and countless one-on-one contacts.

The past 150 years haven't changed the order's mission: to serve the poor, sick and uneducated, particularly women and children.

Sister Louise Huitink is one of the sisters carrying on the work of her predecessors. Her specialty is caring for the elderly poor, bringing them groceries, managing their finances and taking them out for their birthdays.

She and the other 261 sisters in the Regional Community of Cincinnati, which covers Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Jamaica, follow the path of those original women who emigrated from Ireland to serve southwestern Ohio.

Today, the sisters sponsor two high schools for girls and a Montessori school, offer job training for formerly homeless women and deliver food and medicine to the elderly poor.

Sisters help low-income people find psychological help and offer transitional housing to women and children in need.

"We're still helping poor women and children," said Sister Elaine Charters, a member of the order for 52 years.

"You just retranslate it for the times," said Sister Kathy Green, an administrator.

Much of the nuns' work has been handed off, by necessity, to laypeople.

In 1961, there were about 800 sisters in the Cincinnati-based regional community, said Sister Marjorie Rudemiller, president. The median age of the remaining nuns is 75. The youngest is 48.

The original members of the order who crossed the ocean were barely more than girls. Many of them never saw their families again after boarding a boat to America.

The 18- and 19-year-olds had been recruited by Sarah Peter, a wealthy Cincinnati woman who had gone abroad to find religious people to serve the city's missionary needs.

The nuns lived in a run-down house with a board set on barrels serving as a kitchen table.

"They were really pioneers, young women of great faith who didn't know where they were going, didn't know where they were going to stay," Green said.

Those early sisters opened a night school for young Irish women and a shelter to keep them from falling into prostitution. They taught them domestic skills so they could work as maids.

In the 1860s, they opened a laundry and paid destitute women to work there. Soon after, four sisters took over an elementary school for girls, laying the groundwork for the many teaching sisters who would come after them.

In 1892, sisters with no medical training opened Mercy Hospital in Hamilton, the forerunner of what is now the 30-hospital Catholic Healthcare Partners. Today's Sisters of Mercy are co-sponsors.

For the order's first century in existence, the sisters opened or staffed 46 schools, one college and eight hospitals. Sisters of Mercy nuns once taught at the now-closed Holy Family elementary and high schools in Franklinton.

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