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Our Heritage and Story5. Expansion of the Institute
Short Overview from 1894 to 1994After May 1894 would the Institute of Missionary Franciscan Sisters survive without the inspiration and leadership of Elizabeth Hayes? When Elizabeth died her Institute could count as their communities only the Generalate in Rome, the convalescent home in Naples and the little place in Assisi. The Augusta property and the Belle Prairie property, although mortgaged, still belonged to the Institute but had not been reactivated. Had Elizabeth left her sisters with something more valuable than pieces of real estate? One can look back on the expansion of her Third Order Regular Institute and say a definite YES. Elizabeth had set on fire the hearts of some women who could continue to face challenges and move into the 20th century with courage, determination and unswerving faith in their mission. One example of this was seen in Angelica (Mother M of the Angels) Chaffee who stepped into Elizabeth’s shoes. She who admired Elizabeth so much, capably took on leadership and went back to Georgia to negotiate the reopening of a ministry in the state whose needs had so touched the heart of the foundress. In 1897 a school and orphanage for Afro-American girls was opened with episcopal approval in Savannah and it became very fruitful.
In 1898, Mother M of the Angels was able to realize the dream of the foundress to have a mission in Africa. In her publication, the Annals of Our Lady of the Angels, Elizabeth had often written and edited articles about missionary activities in Africa. After a visit to Egypt in the summer of 1898, the second leader returned that autumn with five Sisters from Italy to begin an orphanage for girls at Fayoum, Upper Egypt. The work of the Annals, the journalistic mission that reached into family life, did not lose any momentum in the second half of the last decade of the nineteenth century for the second editor-leader had been schooled in this apostolate since the day she joined Elizabeth and the early Annals workers in Belle Prairie.
Proof of the fruitfulness of the Sisters mission in Egypt was evidenced in that they were asked to open other girls’ schools, one in Cairo in 1907 and another in Damanhour in 1913. By this time, the fourth Mother General of the Institute was Adzire (Mother M Columba) Doucette whose family lived in Belle Prairie, close to the Sisters’ convent-school. A new wave of expansion of our houses in North America followed. A house in Jersey City had been purchased in 1899 so that Sisters on their trans-Atlantic travels had a place to stay. An orphanage was annexed to this house in 1902 and later transferred to Union City in 1904. The Institute’s first parish school and convent was opened in Boston also in 1902 at the request of the Franciscan Fathers at St. Leonard’s Church. Thereafter, almost annually another parish school and convent were added to the activities of the Institute in such diverse cities as Newcastle, New York, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn and Chicago.
Besides the Savanna mission in Georgia, Mother M Columba judged it time in 1901 to try to reopen the school and orphanage for Afro-America girls that was founded by Mother M Ignatius in Augusta. This mission had been abandoned at the time of the American separation in 1890. She was also determined to re-establish the convent in Belle Prairie on the spot where Mother M. Ignatius had made her original foundation. That this leader succeeded in both these undertakings is shown by the fact that not only was a new orphanage constructed in Augusta but the Immaculate Conception School for day pupils was also opened in 1909; and in Belle Prairie a convent and school dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels was opened in 1911. Further expansion occurred in 1912 when the Sisters took up residence in the large new Motherhouse at Via Nicola Fabrizi, again on the Janiculum in Rome.
Simultaneously, the American novitiate received its first candidates to Franciscan life in Newton, MA and the Institute extended its activities to Canada where Sisters assumed the direction of the school in the Servite parish of La Madonna della Difesa in Montreal. By 1929, while still continuing the apostolate of the press, the Sisters were serving in schools, orphanages and parish centers in Canada, Egypt and in several widely scattered States in America. In 1921 a home for the sick and aged Sisters of the Institute was opened in Tenafly, New Jersey.
Later that year, the headquarters of the Annals of Our Lady of the Angels was transferred from Union city to Tenafly where this historic Franciscan periodical was prepared, edited, published and distributed monthly until 1973 when its publication was terminated one hundred years after its founding. The Sisters had learnt well from Elizabeth Hayes the importance of continuing the apostolate of the press.
The 1930s began for the Institute with the commence-ment of its activities in Australia. The first Australian convent was opened in the State of Queensland in Kedron, Brisbane, in 1930. By the end of the 1930s a novitiate had been established in Australia as well as one in Canada, while in Bloomfield, Ireland, a pre-novitiate was organized for the preparation of young women for the novitiate in Rome. New schools were opened during this decade also in Heliopolis and Alexandria in Egypt, at Newton, MA and Rosemont in Canada. Even during the troubled yeas of World War II, the Institute was able to expand, opening new missions in the United States, Australia, Egypt and Canada. In the busy post-war years, a Teacher Training School for Sisters of the Institute affiliated with the Catholic University of America, Washington DC was opened at Newton MA.
The thirty years before 1980 were a period of equally intense activity as the Institute expanded its missionary activities in some fields in response to newly sensed needs and situations while consolidating and reorganizing elsewhere, judiciously redistributing available assets and woman power. Rapid urban growth with the consequent rapid population movement in cities throughout the world necessitated withdrawal from some missions where the need no longer was evident. On the other hand, new ministries have been adopted in other areas where the needs were more urgent, such as among the migrant agricultural workers of Florida. Sharing the concern of the Australian Bishops for the plight of the Aborigines, the Sisters of the Australian province, under the leadership of Irish-born Catherine (Sr M Cassian) Dower, opened missions in outback areas to serve the needs of these disadvantaged people.
Reaching out into new missionary territory, the Sisters from Australia also went to Papua New Guinea in 1949, and after their first mission at Sissano, they served in Fatima, Lumi, Aitape and other places as mainly teachers, nurses and pastoral assistants. One fruit of their work became manifest when in 1977 a novitiate was opened in Aitape to receive vocations from among local young women. In response to Pope John XXIII’s appeal to the Major Superiors of the United States to dedicate some of their personnel to the missions in Latin America, Sisters from the Institute went to the people of Coroico, Bolivia and in 1980 five sisters were engaged in a far-reaching apostolate there. When the Sisters of the Institute celebrated in 1994, the American Province was spread over Central, New England, Northern and Southern Regions as well as the Latin American Region. This Region now included Sondor in Peru, Carmen Pampa outside Coroico as well as the preparation of local young women to become Franciscans Sisters. The Australian Province had Sisters ministering from Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley to Morwell in the Sale Diocese, from Brisbane to Bathurst Island, from Evans Head to Sydney in New South Wales and from the Gold Coast to Rockhampton in Queensland. In Papua New Guinea, their Pro-Province of the Institute was vibrant with young national Sisters and with expatriates, working together to build and spread the reign of God. In Canada, Missionary Franciscan Sisters continued their commitment and service in a number of fields in Montreal and Quebec. They also sent Sisters to their significant mission in Tchad. Another Pro-Province had been established in 1990 and it spanned the countries of Egypt, England, Italy and Ireland. Originally they were known as Dependent Houses but by 1994 with a new expression of government, they felt ‘a greater sense of identity to the respective regions and closer bonds in community and ministry.’ From Guernsey to England, from Glasgow to Jamaica, from Sevres to Spandau, to Belle Prairie, Rome, North America, Egypt, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Bolivia … the charism of Elizabeth (Mother M Ignatius) Hayes continues to live in the Sisters of her Institute, their co-workers and associates.
[Acknowledgement is due to the pre-1980 research of Sr M Redempta Power and Brian de Breffny expressed in Unless the Seed Die for much contained in this article. When resources differ slightly, their research is used because they accessed the MFIC archives in Rome. 1980-94 information is based mainly on the centenary publication, Love Counts Nothing Hard, edited by Sr Helene Byrne assisted by 13 international contributors. All resources edited by Sr M F.]
Text, research and photos by Francine Shaw MFIC PhD
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