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The Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word is the name of two Roman Catholic religious institutes based in the U.S. state of Texas. They use the abbreviation C.C.V.I. (Latin : Congregatio Caritatis Verbi Incarnati).
The Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Houston is a religious institute of women begun in 1866, at the request of French-born Claude Marie Dubuis, the second Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Galveston, which then included the entire state of Texas. Texas was suffering from the ravages of the Civil War, coupled with the tragedy of a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic. In 1866, Dubuis contacted his friend Angelique Hiver, Superioress of the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in Lyons, France. [1] The Sisters could not fulfill his request since the order was cloistered and was committed to the ministry of education. Dubuis then applied for the admission of three young women who had volunteered. They were received into the monastery for the purpose of receiving formation and the rule of the Order, with the understanding that a new order was being formed. For a long time, the Lyons community continued to direct and support the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, as the new community came to be known. [2]
Mary Blandine, Mary Joseph and Mary Ange arrived in Galveston, Texas, and started Charity Hospital, the first Catholic hospital in Texas. This would later become St. Mary's Infirmary and St. Mary's Hospital. Later, as a result of the yellow fever epidemic that struck Galveston, the St. Mary's Orphanage was started, first in the hospital, and was later moved just outside town, away from the epidemic. This epidemic also struck two of the sisters. Mary Blandine died of yellow fever on August 18, 1867; Mary Ange also contracted yellow fever, but recovered and returned to France. In 1867 and 1868, other sisters, educated and professed in the same convent at Lyons, came to offer their assistance. [3]
Mary Joseph became superior, and continued the work in Galveston. In the early part of the 20th century, with the rapid growth of the City of Houston, the institute's headquarters were relocated from the Island city to Houston.
Today the Sisters have missions in Ireland, Guatemala, El Salvador, Kenya and the United States.
They are involved in ministries in health care (as part of Christus Health and Dignity Health), education, and social justice. They are also involved in fighting illiteracy and AIDS.
The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio is the largest group of religious women in Texas.
The institute was founded in San Antonio in 1869, as a sister house of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Galveston, Texas. In 1869, Bishop Dubuis chose three from the Galveston community, St. Madeleine Chollet, St. Pierre Cinquin, and Agnes Buisson to begin a new house in San Antonio and open the first hospital in the area. He named St. Madeleine superior of the new community. Three years later, he appointed St. Pierre Cinquin as her successor, and she remained in office until her death almost twenty years later. In 1870, Dubuis erected this new community as an independent centre, on the occasion of vesting the first postulants admitted into the San Antonio novitiate. [3]
Madeleine Chollet, Pierre Cinquin and Agnes Buisson came to help the people of San Antonio who were being ravaged by a severe cholera epidemic. It was just after the Civil War and San Antonio had a population of 12,000; however, there were no public hospitals. When the three Sisters arrived, they founded the institute of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. They also founded San Antonio's first public hospital, [4] known today as Christus Santa Rosa Hospital.
Previous to 1874, the sisters had been solely occupied in caring for the sick, the aged, and orphans, but following the counsel of Anthony Dominic Pellicer, first bishop of San Antonio, they began to engage in educational work. [3] In 1881, the Sisters founded the Incarnate Word Academy, which became Incarnate Word High School and University of the Incarnate Word. [5]
In 1885 the Sisters opened a school in Saltillo, Mexico.
By 1891 the Sisters had founded St. Joseph's Infirmary in Fort Worth, Texas. They also administered seven railroad hospitals scattered throughout Texas, Missouri, Iowa, and New Mexico.
They are involved in ministries in health care (as part of Christus Health), education, care for the elderly and social justice.
The Village at Incarnate Word is a not-for-profit corporation, established by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio in 1988, to provide a retirement community for people of all faiths. [6]
The sisters work in United States, Mexico, Peru, and Zambia. [7]
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was one of the most destructive hurricanes ever to hit the United States. [8] More than 6,000 people died, one-sixth the population of Galveston, Texas.
The Saint Mary's Orphan Asylum housed at that time 93 children (ages 2 to 13) and 10 sisters. The hurricane arrived quietly on September 7, 1900. The full force of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 would not be felt until the next day, September 8 and began to erode away the sand dunes that surrounded St. Mary's Orphanage. The sisters in charge decided to move the children into the girls' dormitory, as it was newer and stronger (and thus potentially safer) than the boys' dormitory. [9]
The sisters led the children in singing (in English) the old French hymn, Queen of the Waves . Eventually, the boys' dormitory failed and collapsed into the sea. When the waters started to fill the first floor of the girl's dormitory, the sisters moved the children to the second floor, and again led in singing Queen of the Waves. The sisters put clothes line around their waists and connected themselves to six to eight children each in an attempt to save the children. Three of the children (older teens) were left loose. [8]
Finally, the girls' dormitory collapsed. All ten sisters and ninety children perished; only the three teenage boys survived: William Murney, Frank Madera and Albert Campbell. [8]
As a result of this tragedy, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word across the world sing Queen of the Waves every year, on September 8, and remember the sisters and the children that died in Galveston.
On September 8, 1994, a Texas historical marker was placed at 69th Street and Seawall Boulevard, marking the site of the former orphanage. [10] [11]
The 1900 Galveston hurricane, also known as the Great Galveston hurricane and the Galveston Flood, and known regionally as the Great Storm of 1900 or the 1900 Storm, is the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. The strongest storm of the 1900 Atlantic hurricane season, it left between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000. Most of these deaths occurred in and near Galveston, Texas, after the storm surge inundated the coastline and the island city with 8 to 12 ft of water. As of 2024, it remains the fourth deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, behind Hurricane Fifi of 1974. In addition to the number killed, the storm destroyed about 7,000 buildings of all uses in Galveston, which included 3,636 demolished homes; every dwelling in the city suffered some degree of damage. The hurricane left approximately 10,000 people in the city homeless, out of a total population of fewer than 38,000. The disaster ended the Golden Era of Galveston, as the hurricane alarmed potential investors, who turned to Houston instead. In response to the storm, three engineers designed and oversaw plans to raise the Gulf of Mexico shoreline of Galveston Island by 17 ft (5.2 m) and erect a 10 mi (16 km) seawall.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church in the United States. It encompasses 27,841 square miles (72,110 km2) in the U.S. state of Texas. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio had a self-reported 2018 population of 796,954, up from 728,001 in 2014. The archdiocese includes the city of San Antonio and the following counties: Val Verde, Edwards, Real, Kerr, Gillespie, Kendall, Comal, Guadalupe, Gonzales, Uvalde, Kinney, Medina, Bexar, Wilson, Karnes, Frio, Atascosa, Bandera County, and the portion of McMullen County north of the Nueces River.
The Archdiocese of Galveston–Houston is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction—an archdiocese—of the Catholic Church in the United States. The archdiocese covers a portion of Southeast Texas, and is the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province covering east-Texas. The archdiocese was erected in 2004, having been a diocese since 1959 and the "Diocese of Galveston" since 1847. It is the second metropolitan see in Texas after the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
Catherine Spalding, known as Mother Spalding, was an American educator who was a co-founder and longtime mother superior of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. She pioneered education, health services and social services for girls and orphans in Louisville and other Kentucky cities. On January 6, 2003, the Louisville Courier-Journal named Spalding as the only woman among sixteen "most influential people in Louisville/Jefferson County history."
Queen of the Waves is a French Marian hymn sung by French fishermen seeking protection from storms.
The University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) is a private, Catholic university with its main campus in San Antonio and Alamo Heights, Texas. Founded in 1881 by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, the university's main campus is located on 154 acres (0.6 km2). It is the largest Catholic university in Texas.
The Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament is a Catholic religious order founded in the early part of the seventeenth century by Jeanne Chezard de Matel.
Nicholas Joseph Clayton was a prominent Victorian era architect in Galveston, Texas.
Claude Marie Dubuis was a French-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the second bishop of the Diocese of Galveston in Texas. from 1862 until his death in 1892. He founded the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.
Jeanne Chézard de Matel, OVISS was a French Catholic mystic who founded the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, whose rule and constitution were approved in 1633 with the principal objective of youth education.
Incarnate Word High School is a private, Roman Catholic, all-girls high school in Midtown San Antonio, Texas, United States established in 1881. It is located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio and is a division of the University of the Incarnate Word.
Christus Health is an international Catholic nonprofit health system based in Irving, Texas.
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.
Nicolaus Aloysius Gallagher was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Galveston in Texas from 1892 until his death in 1918.
St. Mary's Hospital was a Catholic hospital founded in 1866 by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in Galveston, Texas, United States.
Rebecca Sealy Hospital was an eight-story hospital, and one of five hospitals on the campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1866 as St. Mary's Hospital, a private, Catholic, general hospital, but was purchased in 1996 by the Sealy & Smith Foundation. The foundation renamed it and donated it to the university for use as a psychiatric, outpatient surgery, and research hospital.
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.
St. Joseph Medical Center (SJMC) is a general acute care hospital in Houston, Texas owned by Steward Health Care. Established in June 1887, SJMC is recognized as the first hospital in Houston. A new hospital was constructed in 1894, but was destroyed by fire soon thereafter. The hospital was rebuilt and it underwent major expansions in 1905 and 1938. The hospital was the largest in the city until the Texas Medical Center was established. The hospital has a capacity of 792 beds. A second location was open in the Houston Heights from 2012 to 2019.
Eleanor Anne Young was a Catholic religious sister, research scientist, and educator. She was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Allen Depot was established in 1876 in the central ward of Allen, Texas. The train depot served as a water stop for the Galveston and Red River Railway chartered by Ebenezer Allen in 1848. By 1856, the Southeast Texas to Red River railroad would transition to the Houston and Texas Central Railway.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.