Beyond the Call: The Legacy of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, Florida

By Sister Thomas Joseph McGoldrick

This is the incredible story about the role of a particular group of religious women who came to Florida and Georgia immediately following the Civil War. This book relates the story of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, FL. These French Sisters came in 1866 to educate the liberated slaves. Floridas first Bishop, Augustin Verot invited them from the City of Le Puy in south central France where the Congregation had been founded in 1650. The central piece of the story is about the first eight Sisters and those who followed them in establishing free schools, academies, the founding of orphanages, nursing during yellow fever epidemics (1877, 1888), teaching in Public Schools, Americanization of the Congregation, dynamics in dealing with Bishops in America, separation and excommunication, teaching the Apache Indians, their arrest in 1916 for teaching Black students. There are many letters written by the French Sisters to their comrades and family members in France in the late 1800s giving the real story and the local color of the experiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2008
• ISBN: 9781514400111

Sister Thomas Joseph McGoldrick

Sister Thomas Joseph was born in Sunnyside, N.Y. in 1926 to Lillian (Finn) and Thomas J. McGoldrick. She graduated from St. Joseph Academy, St. Augustine, FL in 1944 and subsequently entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph in St. Augustine and made her final profession in 1950. Sister holds a B.A. from Barry University, Miami, Fl; an M.A. from U of F, Gainesville, FL and a Specialist degree from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Currently she serves as the curator of the O’Reilly House Museum in St. Augustine, archivist for the Diocese of St. Augustine, FL and archivist of her congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, FL.

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Copyright © 2008 by Sister Thomas Joseph McGoldrick.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 01/25/2016

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Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Prologue

Chapters:

1     Beginnings 1650-1865

2     The American Mission 1866

3     In the South 1866-1868

4     Mission to the Blacks and Expansion 1866-1876

5     Savannah, Georgia 1867-1878

6     Florida 1875-1898

7     Excommunication and Separation 1899-1903

8     Americanization

9     Development and Growth 1900-1962

10     The Second Vatican Council and After 1963-1978

11     Renewal Years 1978-1986

12     Rebuilding Years 1986-1994

13     Pastoral Plan Years 1994-2002

14     Refounding Years 2002-2006

Epilogue

Glossary

Bibliography

Illustrations

Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Augustine, Florida

Bishops of Saint Augustine, Florida

Map of Le Puy-en-Velay, France

Pioneer Sisters of Saint Joseph

Superior Generals of Sisters of Saint Joseph,: 1866-2007

Father Miguel O’Reilly House

1867

2003

Sisters of Saint Joseph convents and schools

Sisters of Saint Joseph Convent, Fernandina, Florida, 1872

Saint Joseph Academy, Fernandina, Florida, 1880-1960

Saint Joseph Academy, Palatka, Florida, 1876-1923

Saint Joseph Academy, Jacksonville, Florida, 1876-1923

Saint Joseph Academy, Jacksonville, Florida, 1905-1952

Saint Joseph Academy, Washington, Georgia, 1876

Saint Joseph Academy, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1874

Saint Joseph Academy, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1876

Saint Joseph Academy, Elkton, Florida, 1882-1949

Saint Joseph Academy, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1908-1980

Saint Joseph Convent, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1874-2007

Saint Catherine’s Convent and Academy, Miami, Florida, 1893

Saint Joseph Academy, Mandarin, Florida, 1893-1963

Saint Joseph Academy, Orlando, Florida, 1888-1974

Saint Joseph Convent and Academy, Ybor City, Florida, 1891-1944

Saint Mary’s Home, Jacksonville, Florida, 1886

Saint Mary’s Home, Jacksonville, Florida, 1910-1952

Saint Benedict the Moor School, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1918

Saint Joseph Convent, Miami, Florida, 1992

Students of Saint Benedict the Moor School, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1916

First students of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1867

Saint Joseph Academy students, Saint Augustine, Florida, 1880

Mercy Hospital, Miami, Florida

1950

2002

Missions of the Sisters of Saint Joseph

1866-1970

2007

Sisters of Saint Joseph Architectural Stained Glass Studio

This book is dedicated to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Saint Augustine, Florida: the French Pioneer Sisters; the Sisters of the past, the present, and the future; and the Sisters who served in Georgia.

In addition, this 150th Anniversary Edition is dedicated to the Most Reverend Felipe J. Estévez, Tenth Bishop of St. Augustine.

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Sister Thomas Joseph McGoldrick, SSJ, author,

with Bishop Estévez

Preface

This is an incredible story about the role of a particular group of religious women who were vital participants in the foundation and growth of the Roman Catholic Church in nineteenth-century Florida and Georgia. Although this story reveals the part played by one European religious group in developing the American Catholic Church into the twenty-first century, it is paralleled by the majority of European religious groups who planted the seeds of Catholicism in the New World. For the most part, but not exclusively, information for this story is gleaned from the letters and chronicles found in the archives of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Saint Augustine, Florida, and from the records of their parent congregation of Le Puy, France. The 1800s witnessed men and women religious of various European foundations traveling to the New World to bring Christianity to the inhabitants. Among these groups were Sisters of Saint Joseph who were founded in seventeenth-century France. This book tells their story.

It was 1866, immediately following the American Civil War, when the Sisters of Saint Joseph from Le Puy, France, came to Saint Augustine, Florida, with the specific mission of educating the liberated slaves The war had scarcely ended when the bishop of Savannah, vicar apostolic of Florida, Jean-Pierre Augustin Marcellin Verot asked the Sisters of Saint Joseph from his native city of Le Puy to come to Saint Augustine, the presidio founded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565 for Spain and the Catholic Church. Saint Augustine is the first permanent European city settled in the New World and the city where the Catholic faith began in the continental United States. It is a city made holy by the blood of nameless martyrs from among the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits who accompanied the conquistadores to the New World in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

As this story unfolds, you will learn a great deal about these Sisters, daughters of the church, whose spirit, stamina, dedication, and faith enabled them to accomplish the unthinkable and the unbelievable in the midst of chaos and misery, often in decadent surroundings. These were women who spent themselves for the dear neighbor bringing about unity of neighbor with neighbor and neighbor with God! The organizing of this group of religious women by a Jesuit in the seventeenth century will amaze you as will the six foundresses, who did so much with so little and the bishop of Le Puy, who was the enabler and cofounder of this group.

You will read information not only about early France, the French Revolution, and the guillotine, but about south central France in the 1500s, the religious wars, the bubonic plague, and the part these factors played in the founding of religious groups and how these elements prepared the Sisters of Saint Joseph for evangelization in nineteenth-century France and in the New World. Further will unfold the adjustments experienced in an environment replete with challenges, ordeals, trials, and, in some cases, injustice placed upon them, even by the church—the church they loved and served.

How did they survive? Where did they turn for help? What were the outcomes? Who were the players? Among their number were French, Canadian, Irish, and American women dedicated to the same cause. How did they cope with Reconstruction following the Civil War? How did they adjust to the torrid climate so different from south central France? As late as 1916, these religious women were arrested for teaching Negroes. There was a trial. Life was not easy. The Ku Klux Klan did their part to discourage the ministry of the Sisters. In Savannah, Georgia, as early as 1867, these Sisters were labeled Nigger Nuns. These are only a few of the obstacles faced by these dauntless women of the church.

As you read through this book, you will get an understanding of life in post-Civil War America, and you will better understand the sacrifices endured by religious for the growth of the American Catholic Church. A church strong in education and health care, the very fabric of the American Catholic Church—a church different from its European counterparts—a church built on the dedicated efforts of religious, both men and women, who never counted the cost to bring Christianity to the masses! Catholic schools educated the rich and the poor, Catholics and non-Catholics, and the color of the skin did not matter. All were treated and educated equally! Very often, there was little or no remuneration for Catholic education in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century in the United States. Religious, most often, supported themselves through such means as teaching art and music, lace making and tutoring, as well as teaching in the public schools and opening resident schools to offset the costs of educating the masses.

Finally, it is hoped that you will better understand what has contributed to the strength of the American Catholic Church. You will have an appreciation for the efforts of religious who dedicated and continue to dedicate their lives to bring about peace and justice for all God’s people. You will realize that only God, in His providence, could sustain such dynamic activities; and you may even get your finger on the pulse of what made and continues to make the Catholic Church in America an agent of unity, of love of neighbor, and of equality for all peoples.

Acknowledgments

The author extends much gratitude to the many people who helped bring this book to fruition. First and foremost, much gratitude is extended to our Bishop, Victor B. Galeone, for approving this project and for writing the foreword. A primary debt of gratitude is to Sister Ann Kuhn, SSJ, General Superior of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Saint Augustine, Florida, who commissioned the writing of this book and has been patient in supporting its completion. I thank Sister Jacqueline Perot from Aurillac, France, and Sister Louis Marie Briat, archivist, of Le Puy, France—both have graciously supplied valuable information from the archives of our parent congregation. I also thank Sisters Suzan Foster and Kathleen Power from Saint Augustine who gave generously of their time in reading and advising on the manuscript. In addition, much gratitude goes to Claire Fredette for translating the French letters; Karen Bentkowski for transcribing; Jacqueline Loving for formatting, photography, and untold assistance; Sister Lyn Payette, Diana Hennig, and Barbara Mattick for research assistance; and Sister Jane Miller for providing space, sustenance, and support. Gratitude for artwork and jacket design goes to Sister M. Josepha Butterfield. Finally and most importantly, much gratitude to Prof. Bruce Chappell for his untold assistance and many kindnesses in the editing of this book.

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The Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Augustine 2007

Bishops of Saint Augustine

1870-2007

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Prologue

The Lord appeared to Abraham… as he sat in the entrance of his tent… Is anything too marvelous for the Lord to do? Gen. 18:1, 14

Following Vatican Council II in the 1960’s, religious congregations have made serious efforts to not only look at their roots, but to study them in conformity with the dictates of the Council and to return to them in a renewed fashion. Renewal was to be based on the spirit of the founder(s) coupled with serving the contemporary needs of the people of God. Although we, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Saint Augustine, Florida have worked assiduously for the past forty years to accomplish this end, it occurred to me that the writing of our history would constitute a vital piece of the fabric we are endeavoring to weave.

It is important to look at what God has done in the journey of the congregation since its inception in 1650 to the present day in St. Augustine, Florida. Over and over again, God has made all things new through His unconditional love in good times and in bad times in this congregation. The leaven continued in the building up of the kingdom of God regardless of the vicissitudes and now it is time to move into the future with the same spirit as our pioneer Sisters.

With this in heart and mind, I commissioned the writing of BEYOND THE CALL, The Legacy of the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, Florida in 2004.

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Sister Ann Kuhn, SSJ

General Superior

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FRANCE

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Le Puy

Chapter 1

Beginnings

1650-1865

The Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph is a religious foundation with origins in seventeenth-century France. History records that France, located in the heart of Europe, warred for hundreds of years in defense of its territory from encroachment by the crown of England. Although France was known as the eldest daughter of the Roman Catholic Church, she was slow to respond to the dictates of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). It was only after the publication of Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life in 1608 that the French moved into lay action in the cause of the church. Thus, the work of the saints rather than the dictates of the church was the impetus for reform in France.

This lay action pushed large numbers of women volunteers to the forefront, thus compelling the church to define and clarify the place of women in the ecclesiastical world. The seventeenth century saw women actively involved in catechesis contrary to the prevailing tradition that the females were weak and flawed and not capable of involvement in such works! These women practiced spiritual discipline at a level previously unknown in the laity and manifested a propensity for good works. Their experience was mystical (spiritually significant)! Active women in the apostolate of the church became known as devotes. Great opposition from the clergy finally forced them into the cloister, yet their teaching ministry was so compelling and successful they gained recognition from all levels of society.

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, devotes surfaced again and again throughout France, demonstrating intense devotion and constancy in the service of the dear neighbor. As a result, groups arose periodically only to be forced into the cloister time after time by the Church. Finally, the women decided to forego the title nun and became the first active un-cloistered female religious. They were, in fact, religious without the trappings! This meant accepting lay status in order to continue their active apostolate for the advancement of the church. Over the years, this process produced an abundance of convents throughout France in the first half of the seventeenth century. By the end of the century, religious women had become teachers, nurses, and catechists of the church. They created the lifestyle and mission of their dedication! These were the devotes—unmarried women or widows who wished to live together and to dedicate themselves to good works for the dear neighbor.

Examining the sequence of events in the seventeenth century, it becomes clear that the devotes rendered many types of social services in addition to education. They infused life into active religious congregations: a genuine mystical phenomenon! This new form of religious life forced a radical change in the structure of the Catholic Church. The contribution of these religious women to the growth of French Catholicism is incalculable. They were the church’s teachers, nurses, and social workers for three hundred years.

The Sisters of Saint Joseph were among the first women to practice this style of religious life. Their efforts were blessed. By 1669, there were at least thirty-four communities of Sisters of Saint Joseph in the Massif Central in and around the Diocese of Le Puy, France. Each house was autonomous and was established to meet a local need. There were city houses and country houses, the former with more structure, and members took simple perpetual vows. They operated under the authority of the local bishop and followed a prescribed set of rules. The country members did not take vows but lived the same lifestyle, did the same works, and were associated with the closest urban center. The purpose of both groups was the same: to unite neighbor with neighbor and neighbor with God. All these communities were poor, and few members brought dowries with them. They had no influence with the local parish and had no connection to Rome.

The principal characters in the establishment of the SSJs were Jean Pierre Medaille, a Jesuit priest; Le Puy bishop, Henry de Maupas; six women from the area of south central France; and Marguerite de Saint Laurent, the animator of the six foundresses. It was between 1645 and 1650 when the six courageous women called by God came together to share a common vocation. They came from common origins: poor and with little or no formal education. In age, they ranged from fifteen to forty-six. They were as follows: Franciose Eyraud, aged thirty-nine, from Saint-Privat d’Allier of the Diocese of Le Puy, who had been working as the directress of the orphanage in the city of Le Puy (she became the first superior of the six and died at Le Puy at the age of seventy-two); Claudia Chastel, a war widow from Langogne of the Diocese of Mende (little is known about her except that she could read and write); Marguerite Burdier, aged twenty-four, from Saint-Julien-en-Forez of the Diocese of Lyon (she could read and write and appeared to have had a strong personality, and she was instrumental in the growth of new foundations for the Sisters of Saint Joseph; she died in Vienne in 1700); Anna Chalayer, aged forty-six, from Saint-Genest-Malifaux of the Diocese of Lyon (she died in 1685); Anna Vey, a minor about fifteen years of age, from Saint-Jeures de Bonne of the Diocese of Le Puy; and Anna Brun, aged fifteen, an orphan from Saint-Victor-Malescous of the Diocese of Le Puy (she became the superior at the orphanage in Le Puy and died in 1685). All were women of prayer with a longing in their hearts to be completely consecrated to God and to serve the dear neighbor. These six women shared a spiritual director, the Jesuit missionary, Jean Pierre Medaille.

Jean Pierre Medaille was born on October 6, 1609, in Carcassonne, France. Little is known of his early life except that he entered the Jesuit school in Carcassonne when he was thirteen years old. It was there that he was instilled with the teachings of Ignatius of Loyola. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Toulouse in 1626. He was ordained a priest in 1637 and began his ministry as a teacher in Jesuit colleges. At an early stage he showed the vocations of missionary and spiritual director, and many sought his guidance. Among these latter were the six foundresses of the SSJs. Medaille enabled each one of these women to search for God’s will. He encouraged them to treasure their baptismal calling and challenged them to go further, to take the next step. He often spoke with them about the two trinities: the uncreated Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the created trinity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He showed these women how their relationship to the trinities would enable them to enter into the very energy of God. This devotion enabled the foundresses to see that their life of prayer called them to serve others and that service sent them back to prayer.

There was one other woman, Marguerite de Saint Laurent from Chaudesaigues, who never became a Sister of Saint Joseph but who was closely associated with the first six. She served as spiritual director and animator for the group while she stayed with them for seven years. Her gifts were effective in the formation of new members. After her service to the new community, she chose the life of a recluse.

Although Jean Pierre Medaille is associated with the foundation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, he is not credited with forming their spirituality. Meeting with these women of prayer and insight, he listened to them and began to see the certain grace that had been given to each one of them. He sensed their zeal and complete commitment to the mission of union of themselves with all their dear neighbors and of union of all neighbors with God. He encouraged them to be faithful to the inspiration and to wait for the graced moment when God would show them the way. He gave them guidelines, the Maxims of Perfection,¹ a sharing of his own prayer and insights for their mission. It seems certain that Medaille gave the Maxims to each one of the women individually since they were not living in community but still living in their own homes. The brevity of the Maxims and the calling for rooting out of the old self in these spiritual maxims made them easy to memorize and challenging to apply to daily life. It took a large measure of patience for the six to wait faithfully for grace and to believe that God was preparing them for something new. In a way, this mirrors circumstances today as members of religious communities go about their lives, believing that God is at work, even though they do not always see the rewards of their labors.

Father Medaille spoke often and at length about self-emptying, a concept that was as hard to grasp then as it is now! That these foundresses were forced to wait to see their desires become realities was the first real understanding of self-emptying for them. Self-emptying means that the true self, made in the image and likeness of God, must continually expand while the self-made persona, the false self, must shrink to allow the true self to emerge in its fullness. This is the way to holiness. Medaille’s way of speaking was difficult for the first six especially when he spoke of the need to be pure nothingness and the need to root out all self from self. His language was pure mysticism!

In 1646, Father Medaille began helping the six women to organize. He referred to them as Daughters of Saint Joseph, giving them a written way of life, the Reglements.² He invited them to join together in forming a community. He stressed that their calling to a consecrated life would not offer the help and protection of monasticism, of rule, of the religious habit, or of any part of that ethos. Their cloister would be their own hearts. Everything quickly came together. The new bishop in Le Puy, Henry de Maupas, was delighted to recognize the daughters. The bishop, enthusiastically, gave official status to the new foundation in Le Puy. How the six had longed for this time when their separate lives would coalesce into a shared life, a new way of life! The time came when each one could say yes, and together, they could say yes to walk in greater intimacy with God. It was yes to the commitment of mission; yes to entering a new way of light and darkness; yes to a vowed way of life; yes to being founding members of a congregation dedicated to the great love of God; yes to communal life with all the richness of diversity and the inevitable conflicts which arise even in a community of love.

It was the orphanage for which Francoise Eyraud was responsible that became the first convent and the first mission entrusted to this new group of religious. There was a mission to fulfill, children to be nurtured, poor to be succored, and real needs to be met. Life together was begun with great fervor. As they began sharing their hearts, they soon realized that all were on the same journey and all had the same longings. From the beginning, they knew that their devotion to one another and the gift of life together were vital to their lives. Life in community was and is the first mission. These six women realized that true openness was needed to bring others to their way of life and to help others to share in the mission. They learned the necessity to organization in order to discover the needs of the people, to cultivate virtue and to instruct, to provide for all the spiritual and temporal needs of the dear neighbor".

It is well to recall that Wars of Religion began in France as early as 1562 and continued through 1762, bringing not only the suppression of religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church, but repression of the populace with the poor in particular. This latter, of course, eventually led to outright revolution. The signs of dissatisfaction were abundant and clear. There was drought leading to famine; many were dying of starvation while the aristocracy continued arrogantly, making impossible demands on the populace. There was a united effort for social reform, liberty, and equality; but it failed. And by 1789, France echoed to the cries for revolution. The crown began the confiscation and reduction of church property including houses of religious men and women. Religion was suppressed as part of efforts to separate the French Church from Rome! Early efforts included requiring priests to swear allegiance to a secular constitution. Then pressure was put on the religious to participate in clandestine activities, such as Holy Mass conducted only by politicized priests. Although some religious succumbed, most refused and held to their convictions dying rather than denying their faith.

Prior to the French Revolution, there were perhaps two hundred communities of SSJ in and around the French Massif Central. Their growth had been phenomenal! The SSJ found it necessary at the time of the revolution to abandon their convents, disperse, and return to their individual family homes where possible. The state disposed of the Sisters’ property and actually expelled them from their house on rue de Montferrand in Le Puy. The orphanage became a prison. Maximilien Robespierre’s Reign of Terror witnessed repeated attempts to force religious to comply with revolutionary creeds. They were tested and, for noncompliance, condemned for treason. In fact, most of the SSJ were imprisoned, and of those, some were executed for harboring recalcitrant priests. Two Sisters were guillotined in Martouret Square in the heart of Le Puy on June 17, 1794. They were Sister Saint Julien (Marie Anne Garnier) and Sister Saint Alexis (Jeanne Marie Dumoulin). Later, three other SSJ from the Diocese of Viviers, known as the Martyrs of Privas, were imprisoned in Privas. These were Sisters Saint Croix (Antoinette Vincent), Madeleine (Marie Anne Senovert), and Toussaint (Madeleine Dumoulin). They were guillotined on August 5, 1794. The irony to this treatment appears when, in 1795 and 1796, many sisters were called back by the state to perform the onerous and often repulsive tasks in the hospitals.

During the revolution, the congregation seemingly disappeared, but it was only dormant. It rose like the phoenix, more lustrous than ever. As the long ordeal of the revolution succumbed to exhaustion, the Sisters began to reassemble. Groups of religious began to gather around courageous dedicated women like Sister Anne-Marie Grand in Le Puy, Sister Saint Joseph Jallat-Lagardette in Ardeche, Sister Rose Reboulet in Saint Vallier, and Sister Saint John Fontbonne in Lyon. The SSJ reorganized and refounded communities in the areas where they found themselves living when the revolution ended. In Le Puy, six Sisters came together under the leadership of Sister Anne-Marie Grand. Their first task was a petition to the city council of Le Puy for the permission to live in the community again. As soon as this request was granted, they immediately followed it with a request to reestablish themselves at Montferrand, their original home, in order to reopen the orphanage that was desperately needed there. It took several years for this request to be granted. All through the post revolution years, the SSJ grew with former members returning and new aspirants drawn to the mission of these devout and dedicated women.

In the chaos caused by the French Revolution, the successful system of schools operated by the religious of the seventeenth century disappeared. However, the Franco-Papal Concordat of 1801 allowed the Catholic Church to rebuild its educational system. The SSJ were among the first teaching congregations to revive and restore schools. By 1827, they were operating fifty-eight schools in the Diocese of Le Puy while also carrying out works of charity. The schools operated by the Sisters became dominant providers of education in this period because they were affordable and available. The municipalities, bound by law to provide education, promoted congregational schools as a realistic means of providing education for the masses. Thus, the utility of the Catholic Church, not its ideology, remained vital and grew in the daily life of France.

It seems important to understand that most of the teachers in the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph were indigenous to their own schools. The novices came from the rural neighborhood of Le Puy and the Massif Central in general and were usually between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. The dowry contracts of the novices with the religious community show that the women entering the SSJ were, for the most part, peasants. They were poor! Records show that the lack of a dowry or a pension was not considered an obstacle for membership in the congregation. Candidates had to have the qualities required for religious life: good health, mental and physical stamina, and, most importantly, the desire to serve the dear neighbor. Daily, they rose very early and used that quiet time to pray, to meditate, and to read the office (prayers) of the day. Following prayer and meditation, work ensued with teaching or caring for the sick and the poor.

Those who became members of the congregation were expected to teach and to behave in a certain way. These qualities were developed and inculcated in novitiate training of the congregation. At least one year of core training was required to allow new members to develop the unique spirit of the SSJ and to give them a unified interpretation of the rules as well as create a bond of unity among themselves. They were to learn to grow in prayer and in the love of God. Professional training was also part of the total training program.

When the Sisters opened the doors to their little schools in the nineteenth century, they had already regained their legal status, which was essential. This was affirmed in the Royal Order of April 22, 1827, signed by Charles X of France. This order authorized the house of Le Puy and fifty-eight communities in the area to operate. Under the Second French Empire (1852-1870), they received further authorization over the signature of Napoleon III on October 23, 1867. This decree ordained that the hospitable and teaching association of the SSJ would be directed by a superior general who would reside exclusively in the Diocese of Le Puy. One of the reasons for the strength of the schools of the SSJ was the economy and the efficiency of the system. Sisters’ stipends were meager; and in addition to teaching school, they visited the sick, gave alms to the poor, taught evening and Sunday school classes, and served as church sacristans. There were times when they supplied textbooks, school supplies, and even clothing and food to students in need. Their charity and dedication knew no bounds. Examples of this life are found in the necrology of the congregation:

Sister Josephine was in charge of the younger students in grade one, she affectionately looked after them and taught them how to pray, read, sing and even work. A teacher and also a sacristan for several years, she would repair the vestments, and embroider albs and altarpieces. To the great satisfaction of her community she also served as nurse and treasurer, before assuming the heavy task of superior.

It is vital to note that it was the religious congregations of women who pioneered the establishment of nursery schools and day care programs that rendered such service to working families in fields and factories of that period. All in all, their service included anything to assist the dear neighbor in working out a living side by side with salvation.

The question should be raised about why these women dedicated themselves to this way of life, this mission to serve the dear neighbor. The price members had to pay in this cause required them to renounce worldly pleasures and to live the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. To work in the world, religious had to withdraw from it. This enabled them to live a strict moral code while, at the same time, accepting second-class status (they were not cloistered) in the church they loved and served! Their bearing and conduct gave them credibility as educational and religious role models, which in turn gave them acceptance in parishes, municipalities, and the nation of France.

In nineteenth-century France, religious congregations rapidly proliferated, and numerous new foundations were established. In the second half of the nineteenth century, waves of missionaries from European congregations departed for the western hemisphere. In 1866, the story of the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Florida and Georgia begins and unfolds with the mystical experiences and saga of those amazing women told in the following chapters.

Chapter 2

The American Mission

1866

Why did these Sisters of Saint Joseph from Le Puy, France, come to the New World—to Savannah and to Saint Augustine?

Aside from God’s plan, the human factors that brought the Sisters of Saint Joseph to Florida and Georgia from Le Puy in 1866 mainly were the American Civil War and a zealous prelate, Jean-Pierre Augustin Verot. Union troops took possession of Saint Augustine on March 10, 1862. The American Civil War started at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April of 1861 and ended in May of 1865; it took at least six hundred thousand lives, destroyed property valued in the billions, and granted freedom to some four million Negro slaves. This four-year war set the American South back several generations in agriculture and industry. Although this battle freed the Negro, it failed to raise the Negro to a position of equality with the white man.

The Civil War had scarcely ended and had left thousands of people without a means of livelihood, of education, and of knowledge of God in their lives. Augustin Verot, Bishop of Georgia and Apostolic Vicar of Florida, grieved at the sight of many members of his flock buried in a deep ignorance; he resolved to make a supreme effort to find laborers for his vineyard. Although funds were scarce, he decided to travel to France in search of religious who would teach the liberated slaves and their children in his diocese and vicariate. He traveled to Le Puy, his native city, to ask the Sisters of Saint Joseph to come to Savannah, Georgia, and to Saint Augustine, Florida. He was asking a great deal. The South was under Reconstruction, and although no battle had been fought in Saint Augustine, the city had become poorer due to the ravages of the war. Supplies were hard to come by; many farming areas had been destroyed, causing a scarcity of food, and shipments from Europe were generally impossible. However, it was the status of the Negro that became a crucial issue of Reconstruction. State governments enacted laws that required the Negro to sign labor contracts, allowed employers to whip black workers, and permitted jailing of unemployed blacks and labor lease of their children. Former slaves were frequently assaulted by whites. Between 1865 and 1866, whites murdered about five thousand blacks in the South! The Ku Klux Klan was organized in Tennessee at this time and grew rapidly throughout the South. Members of this group often beat and murdered blacks along with their white sympathizers to keep them from exercising their rights. Reconstruction failed to bring racial harmony to the South, and it failed to solve the economic problems of the blacks. Whites refused to share political power with blacks. In turn, the blacks set up their own churches and other institutions rather than attempt to join white society. Following Reconstruction, the blacks gradually lost the rights they had gained. By the early 1900s, every Southern state had passed laws limiting voting rights. These laws gave the vote only to males who could pass certain educational tests or pay special taxes called poll taxes. Thus, most blacks were disenfranchised.

It was into this environment that Bishop Verot sought the Sisters of Saint Joseph to live and to work. The conditions were horrendous. In a letter to Archbishop Kendrick in Baltimore in 1858, he wrote, The country is poor and the people are not like the North, fond of giving to the Church, even out of their poverty. It did not take Verot long to learn how far the fortunes of the Church had fallen since Spanish days, and he wrote in his first pastoral letter of August 28, 1858, Over an immense region including more than six degrees of latitude we have but three clergymen, but three missionaries to act as the co-operators of our ministry. How strange! How desolating is this statement for such a country as Florida which bears almost everywhere marks, remembrances and tokens of its Catholic institutions… Florida which two hundred years ago possessed so many convents, in which men were trained in study and austerity for the labor of evangelizing the poor and ignorant… Florida which abounded with devoted and self-denying missionaries who had set at naught everything that the world holds dear, for the sake of diffusing the light of heaven among those who were sitting in the shadow of death… Florida which has been bedewed in the East and the West, in the North and in the South with the purest blood of martyrs! O, the dreadful effect of human vicissitudes! O, the desolating proof of the instability of everything here below! Such was the man, the prelate, the first bishop of Florida—Augustin Verot!

Who was this bishop? Jean-Pierre Augustin Verot was born in Le Puy, France, on May 23, 1804. He studied for the priesthood with the Society of Saint Sulpice at Issy, just outside Paris, and joined that society after his ordination on September 20, 1828. He came to America in 1830 to teach at Saint Mary’s Seminary and College then directed by the Sulpicians in Baltimore, Maryland. His next assignment was as pastor of Saint Paul’s Church, Ellicott Mills, Maryland, where he demonstrated energy and activity in his parochial duties and enjoyed the challenges of parish work. In 1857, at the request of the Council of Baltimore, the sovereign pontiff detached eastern Florida from the Diocese of Savannah and erected it as a vicariate apostolic. Augustin Verot was selected by the pope to direct this new vicariate that included all of the state of Florida east of the Apalachicola River. Although Verot was reluctant to accept the charge, he was consecrated on April 25, 1858, in the cathedral of Baltimore by Archbishop Kendrick and was officially installed in Saint Augustine June 1, 1858, as the Vicar Apostolic of Florida by Bishop John Barry of Savannah. He came to Saint Augustine where there were 952 white and 376 Negro Catholics. A few years later, in 1861, Verot was appointed Bishop of Savannah and had earned the title: the Great Catholic Figure in Reconstruction of the South.

The short stout prelate of French extraction named Verot, now bishop of Savannah and apostolic vicar of Florida, received word in 1869 from Pope Pius IX of his intention to convene an ecumenical council of all bishops of the Catholic Church. The first such assembly since the Council of Trent (1545-1563), it would open on December 8, 1869, and would be known as the Vatican Council. Already famous in America for his role during and after the Civil War, Bishop Verot would soon be known internationally, under the title of first bishop of Saint Augustine, as one of the most vocal and competent participants in that council. No one at the time, either in Europe or America, suspected that Verot could play the important role he did. His episcopal life seemed to be bound up almost entirely with pastoral and practical problems. Few, apparently, thought that this great missionary in the post-Civil War South possessed the depth of theological knowledge and the vision that he would demonstrate three years later in Rome. In the various previews of the council published in the Catholic press between 1867 and 1870, Verot’s name is not mentioned. But behind the simple, unassuming manner of the prelate lay a lifetime of deep theological, historical, and scientific study.

From October 1830—when young Father Verot arrived in the United States from Paris to teach, through his appointments as Vicar Apostolic of Florida in 1858 and Bishop of Savannah in 1861, and during the dark days of Reconstruction—Verot had been an indefatigable student of church affairs and a constant correspondent with men of learning. Equally important, that body of knowledge that he had so assiduously cultivated had been broadened and enhanced by a wide pastoral experience, especially in post-Civil War years. Thus, Bishop Verot could take to Rome more than an abstract knowledge of the Catholic faith; he could take a practical knowledge of how that faith was manifesting itself in human society. It was precisely this facility of impressing doctrinal truth on practical fact that was to make him one of the great figures of the council. As the opening date approached, most of the American bishops issued pastoral letters on the nature of that solemn assembly. They proposed the council to their people as a means of reaffirming the church’s religious mission amid a new and increasingly secular form of civilization. The Catholic press showed universal pleasure at the prospect, and there were occasional editorial expressions of pride that the bishops of the United States were about to participate for the first time in a general council.

Bishop Verot himself issued a lengthy pastoral letter on the council in September 1869. Speaking to his people in Florida and Georgia, he predicted that the coming council will be etched in the annals of the Church as a glaring epoch and era where the finger of God… may be exhibited to the gaze of mankind with new luster and overpowering majesty for the… permanent reign of order everywhere in the Church and State. He went on to urge his people to enter into the views, desires and intentions of the pope. For is it not supremely proper that the members should follow the direction of the head? He sailed for Europe in October 1869, with his vicar-general, Father Peter Dufau. In Rome, they took up residence with sixteen other American prelates at the old North American College (where his name may be seen today inscribed on a plaque commemorating the group of Bishops living there 1869-1870). There were forty-nine American archbishops and bishops in attendance, but none of them loomed so large in debates, however, as Verot. Almost from the opening, he represented the American voice. He spoke in clear and faultless Latin on January 3, 1870, taking the lead among his colleagues in stressing the peculiarly American problems that faced the church in America, namely a dominantly Protestant culture, the rising influence of pragmatic philosophy and increasing secularization in politics and education. It is clearly amazing that Bishop Verot displayed the same keen understanding of the new challenges facing the church in the 1860s as those found facing the church in the Second Vatican Council of 1960.

As early as 1859, Verot had successfully recruited three Christian Brothers from Canada and five Sisters of Mercy from Hartford, Connecticut, to open a boys’ day school and a girl’s academy respectively in Saint Augustine. The schools opened amid some local criticism expressed in the local newspaper the St. Augustine Examiner, February 11, 1860: the moment our schools erect fortifications of sect and ism around them, from that moment, we honestly believe, they strike the first blow at their own ruin. This did not daunt Verot. The schools were in operation for a year, when the same newspaper had a different message