The Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth are a Roman Catholic apostolic congregation of pontifical right, based in the Convent Station area of Morris Township, New Jersey, USA. The religious order was established in 1859 in Newark, New Jersey, following the example of Elizabeth Ann Seton's community that was founded in 1809 in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
In 1858, the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, James Roosevelt Bayley, a nephew of Elizabeth Ann Seton, applied to Mount Saint Vincent's, New York, for sisters to form a separate mother-house in his diocese. Mary Xavier Mehegan, a member of the Sisters of Charity of New York was placed in charge of St. Mary's, Newark. [1]
At the request of Bishop Bayley, Sister Mary Xavier was appointed superior of the new foundation, with Sister Mary Catherine Nevin assistant. The habit and the constitutions of the Sisters of Charity in New York were retained. On 29 September, 1859, the new community was formally opened in St. Mary's, Newark, the first superior general being the Reverend Bernard J. McQuaid, later Bishop of Rochester, New York. Bishop Bayley had strongly advocated a change in the head-dress of the sisters. This, however, was not carried into effect until 1874, when the black cap adopted by Mother Seton was replaced by a white one with a black veil. [2]
The Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth founded the Academy of Saint Elizabeth, the first secondary school for young women in the state, near Morristown in 1860 during the same year that they established their motherhouse at that location. [3] Eventually, the nearby community became known as Convent Station because of a railway station built during the 1870s with funds provided by the order, to accommodate their needs. In 1899 the religious order also established the College of Saint Elizabeth on the same campus, becoming the first four year liberal arts college for women in New Jersey and one of the first Catholic colleges in the United States to award degrees to women. That same year, they established St. Aloysius Academy, a private school for women, in Jersey City. St. Aloysius closed in 2005. [4]
The Saint Anne Villa is the retirement facility on the campus for members of the order. Later in 1935 the Sisters of Charity also sponsored another academy, Marylawn of the Oranges, a college preparatory school for young women in the Essex County area. [5]
From 1924 until the Communist takeover in 1951, the community maintained missions in Yuanling and Wuki, Hunan, China. The missions included an elementary school, dispensary, and embroidery school, as well as, a hospital, nursing school, and high school for girls. During World War II, when forced to evacuate Hunan, the sisters served as nurses at the US 95th Station Hospital in Kunming. [6]
During the Civil War, Sisters of Charity cared for soldiers on both sides in emergency hospitals set up at the train stations in Newark and Trenton. In 1867, the sisters founded St. Joseph's Hospital in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1895, they established a School of Nursing. [7]
In August 1904, the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, by approval of Bishop John J. O'Connor of Newark, took on the responsibility of planning and organizing a new hospital in the City of Elizabeth. On May 30, 1905, it opened its doors under the name of St. Elizabeth Hospital. Through the years many renovations and relocations took place. In January 2000, St. Elizabeth Hospital and Elizabeth General Medical Center were consolidated to form Trinitas Regional Medical Center, a service healthcare facility serving Eastern and Central Union County It is also a Catholic teaching hospital. [8] In 1906, at the request of a group of local physicians, the sisters founded the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, Connecticut. [9] In 2012, it became the St. Raphael Campus of Yale-New Haven Hospital. [10]
St. Raphael's Hospital in Faisalabad, Pakistan was also founded by the Elizabeth sisters.
As of 2019, the congregation had 451 vowed members serving in education, health care, pastoral and social service ministries in 15 states and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, El Salvador, Central America and Haiti. [7] The Maris Stella Retreat and Conference Center is located on Barnegat Bay. [11] The Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth congregation is a member of the Sisters of Charity Federation in the Vincentian-Setonian Tradition.
The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute for women in the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. As of 2019, the institute has about 6200 sisters worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations. They also started many education and health care facilities around the world.
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton was a Catholic religious sister in the United States and an educator, known as a founder of the country's parochial school system. Born in New York and reared as an Episcopalian, she married and had five children with her husband William Seton. Two years after his death, she converted to Catholicism in 1805.
Many religious communities have the term Sisters of Charity in their name. Some Sisters of Charity communities refer to the Vincentian tradition alone, or in America to the tradition of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, but others are unrelated. The rule of Vincent de Paul for the Daughters of Charity has been adopted and adapted by at least sixty founders of religious institutes for sisters around the world.
The Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in north-central and northeastern Indiana in the United States.
James Roosevelt Bayley was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the first Bishop of Newark (1853–1872) and the eighth Archbishop of Baltimore (1872–1877).
The Diocese of Paterson is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in northern New Jersey. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Newark.
The Archdiocese of Newark is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in northeastern New Jersey in the United States.
The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul of New York, most often known as the Sisters of Charity of New York, is a religious congregation of sisters in the Catholic Church whose primary missions are education and nursing and who are dedicated in particular to the service of the poor. The motherhouse is located at Mt. St. Vincent in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. They were founded by Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1809.
The Sisters of Charity Federation in the Vincentian-Setonian Tradition is an organization of fourteen congregations of religious women in the Catholic Church who trace their lineage to Saint Elizabeth Seton, Saint Vincent de Paul, and Saint Louise de Marillac.
Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, SC was an American Ruthenian Greek Catholic Sister of Charity who was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2014. The beatification ceremony was the first to take place in the United States, being held in Newark, New Jersey.
The Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill were founded by Sister Aloysia Lowe. In 1870, she and sisters Blanche O'Keefe, Maria Theresa O'Donnell, Maria Kavanaugh and two novices were sent to western Pennsylvania from the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and began their work, founding and staffing schools. The sisters later expanded their work to include healthcare.
The Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati were founded in 1852 by Mother Margaret Farrell George, by the separation of the community from the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland. the motherhouse of the community is at Mount Saint Joseph, Ohio.
The Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul were founded on May 11, 1849, when the four founding Sisters of Charity arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from New York City; this has been designated a National Historic Event.
Robert Seton was a descendant of the New York "aristocratic" Seton and Bayley families, Seton was also a monsignor in the Roman Catholic Church and titular archbishop of Heliopolis.
Mary Xavier Mehegan, S.C. was a Roman Catholic sister who founded the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth and opened New Jersey's first four-year college for women.
Thomas Aloysius Boland was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark in New Jersey from 1952 to 1974. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the same diocese from 1940 to 1947 and bishop of the Diocese of Paterson in New Jersey from 1947 to 1952.
The Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy is a Roman Catholic religious institute founded by Bishop John England of the Diocese of Charleston in South Carolina, in 1829 as the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. In 1949 the word "Charity" was added to the congregation's name, in order to identify it more explicitly with others that follow the Rule of Life of St. Vincent de Paul. They came to serve throughout the Eastern United States. The members of the congregation use the postnominal initials of O.L.M.
Richard Bayley was a prominent New York City physician and the first chief health officer of the city. An expert in yellow fever, he helped discover its epidemiology, improved city sanitation, and authored the federal Quarantine Act of 1799. The 1788 Doctors' Riot was sparked by fears that his students were secretly removing corpses from graves in order to dissect them.
William Aloysius Griffin was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Trenton in New Jersey from 1940 until his death in 1950. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark in New Jersey from 1938 to 1940.