Lucy Eaton Smith

Last updated
Mother
Mary Catherine De Ricci
O. P.
Mother Mary Catherine De Ricci, Lucy Eaton Smith.png
Image courtesy of the Congregational Archives, Dominican Sisters of Peace
Personal
Born(1845-03-22)March 22, 1845
Brooklyn, New York
DiedMay 27, 1894(1894-05-27) (aged 49)
ReligionCatholic
NationalityAmerican

Lucy Eaton Smith (1845-1894), in religious life Mother Mary Catherine De Ricci of the Sacred Heart, was an American Roman Catholic nun who founded the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine de' Ricci, a pontifical institute in Albany, New York.

Contents

Early life and education

She was born in Brooklyn to a nonreligious mother, Adelia O. McIntyre Smith, and a nominally Presbyterian father, Edwin Smith. Mr. Smith was a civil engineer, as were the men on his father's side, and his mother's relatives were bankers, so the family was affluent. [1] Lucy Eaton Smith was educated privately at an Episcopal school, and made her debut to New York society. She was baptized Episcopalian at age 5, and remained Protestant until age 21. [2]

As a young adult, Smith occasionally attended mass at St. Vincent De Paul Church, where she felt drawn. [3] Accounts vary on what happened next in her path into the Catholic church. Some versions have her kneeling at the altar, and being asked why she remained Episcopalian. Others mention that years later most of her family also became Catholic. [4] On December 18, 1865, she was received into the Catholic church by Father Alfred Young, a Paulist priest who also had entered the church from another denomination. [5]

Entrance into the Dominicans

Being a woman of means and also in variable health, she was encouraged to travel, perhaps to seek healing. She spent five years in Europe beginning in the early 1870s, visiting convents and exploring her faith. [6] She was inspired by the Dominican saint and Italian mystic, Catherine de' Ricci, with whom she identified in illness, and because de' Ricci was a patron saint of the sick. [7] Through the encouragement of Dominican Friar Pere Aquilani in Berlin, who had become her confessor, she expressed interest in becoming a member of the Sisters of the Cenacle. Instead, he encouraged her to the Dominicans, and legend says he showed her an orange tree and told her she would become its newest branch. [8]

Image courtesy of the Congregational Archives, Dominican Sisters of Peace Mother Mary Catherine De Ricci, Lucy Eaton Smith 02.png
Image courtesy of the Congregational Archives, Dominican Sisters of Peace

Some sources say France and others say Rome, but she joined the Third Order of Saint Dominic as a lay Dominican. [9] However, when she returned to New York in 1876, at Fr. Aquilan had urged, she was rebuffed or at least stalled by the Dominicans when there was no immediate financial or logistic interest in her desire to start a convent. Instead, she joined the Dominican Congregation of Our Lady of the Rosary, founded by two Englishwomen, Alice Mary and Lucy Thorpe, who had entered Catholicism from the Anglican Church. [10] This was an active congregation that took care of orphans, however, and Smith was more visionary and contemplative. [11] She left the sisters after nine months and lived with her maternal grandmother, Mrs. McIntyre, in Upstate New York, near Glen Falls. There she met a priest who introduced her to Francis McNeirny, Bishop of Albany, who approved her idea of founding a Dominican community in Glens Falls. She received her Dominican habit on May 24, 1880, and with her vows she took the name Mother Mary Catherine De Ricci of the Sacred Heart. [12] She felt the third order rule would provide more freedom, along the lines of the patron saint of Italy, the third-order Dominican Saint Catherine of Siena. [13]

Her sister Isabel "Lillie" Smith joined the convent as Mother M. Loyola of Jesus in 1886. [14] The community moved to Albany in 1887. Mother De Ricci took her perpetual vows on March 25, 1890. She died on May 24, 1894.

Mother Loyola (Lillie) succeeded her as head of the congregation after her untimely death. She went to Havana, Cuba during the 1898 Spanish-American War at the invitation of Bishop Sbarretti, to care for Afro-Cuban children orphaned by the war. However, neither the Bishop nor the Cuban government would pay for the children's care, so the sisters begged for support, just as they had done to found their congregation. Saint Katharine Drexel, the wealthy Philadelphian who later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of their financial sponsors, and they opened a home in 1900. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katharine Drexel</span> American Catholic nun and saint (1858–1955)

Katharine Drexel, SBS was an American Catholic heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, and educator. In 1891, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious order serving Black and Indigenous Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ascensión Nicol y Goñi</span>

María Ascensión Nicol y Goñi, O.P., was a Spanish Roman Catholic religious sister of the Third Order of St. Dominic. She co-founded and was the first Prioress General of the Congregation of Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Rosary, which she helped to found in Peru.

The Daughters of the Cross of Liège are religious sisters in the Catholic Church who are members of a religious congregation founded in 1833 by Marie Thérèse Haze (1782–1876). The organization's original mission is focused on caring for the needs of their society through education and nursing care.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Dominican Sisters</span>

The Adrian Dominican Sisters is a Catholic religious institute of Dominican sisters in the United States. Their motherhouse is in Adrian, Michigan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Third Order of Saint Dominic</span> Order of religious men and women

The Third Order of Saint Dominic, also referred to as the Lay Fraternities of Saint Dominic or Lay Dominicans since 1972, is a Catholic third order which is part of the Dominican Order.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Brocadelli</span> Dominican tertiary and stigmatic

Lucy Brocadelli, also known as Lucy of Narni or Lucy of Narnia, was a Dominican tertiary who was famed as a mystic and a stigmatic. She has been venerated by the Roman Catholic Church since 1710. She is known for being the counselor of the Duke of Ferrara, for founding convents in two different and distant city-states and for her remains being solemnly returned to her home city of Narni on 26 May 1935, 391 years after her death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisca del Espíritu Santo Fuentes</span> Filipino nun and Venerable

Francisca del Espíritu Santo de Fuentes was a Spanish Roman Catholic religious sister. She became the first prioress of the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena in the Philippines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Hallahan</span> English Catholic religious sister

Margaret Hallahan was an English Catholic religious sister, foundress of the Dominican Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary</span>

The Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary is a Roman Catholic religious institute founded in Ghent, Belgium. An enclosed religious order, its main apostolate is helping the needy and the sick, inspired by the work of Saint Vincent de Paul and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.

Mary Aloysia Hardey, R.S.C.J., was an American religious sister of the Society of the Sacred Heart. She established all the convents of her order, up to the year 1883, in the eastern part of the United States as well as in Canada and Cuba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine de' Ricci</span> Italian Roman Catholic saint

Catherine de' Ricci, OP, was an Italian Catholic nun in the Dominican Tertiaries. She is believed to have had miraculous visions and corporeal encounters with Jesus, both with the infant and adult Jesus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Cleophas Foley</span>

Mother Mary Cleophas Foley, S.P., was the Superior General of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana from 1890 to 1926. During her time in office, she completed the building of the Church of the Immaculate Conception and built numerous other buildings at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, including a new Providence Convent, the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, and an infirmary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis McNeirny</span> American clergyman

Francis McNeirny was an American clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Bishop of Albany from 1877 until his death in 1894.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominican Order in the United States</span>

The Dominican Order was first established in the United States by Edward Fenwick in the early 19th century. The first Dominican institution in the United States was the Province of Saint Joseph, which was established in 1805. Additionally, there have been numerous institutes of Dominican Sisters and Nuns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Abrikosova</span> Russian Catholic religious sister and translator

Anna Ivanovna Abrikosova, TOSD, later known as "Mother Catherine of Siena", was a Russian Greek-Catholic religious sister and literary translator, who died after more than a decade of solitary confinement as a prisoner of conscience in Joseph Stalin's concentration camps.

The Dominican Sisters of Hope formed in 1995 from the merger of three Dominican congregations: the Dominican Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary of Newburgh, New York (1883), the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena (1891) of Fall River, Massachusetts, and the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor (1910) of Ossining, NY. They sponsor Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh and Mariandale Retreat Center in Ossining. The Sisters minister in healthcare in New York City, and in education, social service and pastoral ministries.

The Dominican Sisters of Peace is a congregation of Dominican Sisters of apostolic life, founded on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009, from the union of seven former Dominican foundations. With general offices in Columbus, Ohio, the congregation holds legal incorporation in the state of Kentucky, home of the founding community of earliest historical origin. In 2012, following a vote by their General Chapter, the Dominican sisters of Catherine de' Ricci became the eighth foundation to join the Dominican Sisters of Peace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warburton House</span> United States historic place

Warburton House, also known as the Warburton Hotel and The Lucy Eaton Smith Residence, is an historic, American hotel that is located in the Rittenhouse Square East neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named for Lucy Eaton Smith, whose name in religious life was Mother Mary Catherine De Ricci of the Sacred Heart, who founded a Dominican pontifical institute in Albany, New York.

Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States have played a major role in American religion, education, nursing and social work since the early 19th century. In Catholic Europe, convents were heavily endowed over the centuries, and were sponsored by the aristocracy. Religious orders were founded by entrepreneurial women who saw a need and an opportunity, and were staffed by devout women from poor families. The number of Catholic nuns grew exponentially from about 900 in the year 1840, to a maximum of nearly 200,000 in 1965, falling to 56,000 in 2010. According to an article posted on CatholicPhilly.com, the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in October 2018, National Religious Retirement Office statistics showed that number as 47,160 in 2016, adding that “about 77 percent of women religious are older than 70.” In March 2022, the NRRO was reporting statistics from 2018, citing the number of professed sisters as 45,100. The network of Catholic institutions provided high status lifetime careers as nuns in parochial schools, hospitals, and orphanages. They were part of an international Catholic network, with considerable movement back and forth from Britain, France, Germany and Canada.

The Dominican Congregation of Our Lady of the Rosary, better known as the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, is an institute of religious sisters of the Third Order of Saint Dominic based in Sparkill, New York, which was founded in 1876. The congregation developed to care for indigent women but now works primarily in education as well.

References

  1. "The Congregation of St. Catherine of Ricci: Eleventh Article of American Foundations of Religious Communities". American Ecclesiastical Review: A Monthly Publication for the Clergy. 21: 271. 1899.
  2. "The Congregation of St. Catherine of Ricci": 271.
  3. Garson, OP, Nancy. "Lignum Habet Spem: Dominican Sisters of Catherine De Ricci". Building Peace podcast. Dominican Sisters of Peace.
  4. Aloysia, OSB, Reverend Mother (1914). The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X. Volume II, The Religious Communities of Women. Norwood, Massachusetts: The Plimpton Press. p. 150.
  5. McNamara, Pat (October 13, 2010). "Lucy Eaton Smith (1845-1894): New York Socialite, Catholic Convert, Dominican Foundress". Patheos.
  6. Davis, OP, Carol. "Lignum Habet Spem".
  7. "The Congregation of St. Catherine of Ricci": 274.
  8. Ryan, OP, Aimee. "Lignum Habet Spem".
  9. Mannes, OP, Brother. "Dominican Sisters in the United States". The Dominicana: 117.
  10. Garson, OP, Nancy. "Lignum Habet Spem".
  11. Pace, Edward A.; Pallen, Condé; Shahan, Thomas J.; Wynne, SJ, John J., eds. (1922). An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, Volume 17. New York: The Encyclopedia Press, Inc. pp. 725–726.
  12. Aloysia, Mother. The Catholic Church in the United States of America. p. 150.
  13. Margalith, Dana (2018). Tradition as Mediation: Louis I. Kahn The Dominican Motherhouse & The Hurva Synagogue (Routledge Research in Architecture). Milton Park, Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9781317203315.
  14. Aloysia, Mother. The Catholic Church in the United States of America. p. 152.
  15. Moses, Donna Maria (2017). American Catholic Women Religious: Radicalized by Mission. New York: Springer International Publishing. p. 16. ISBN   9783319604657.