The Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota is a Roman Catholic religious congregation for women. The congregation was founded in 1877 by Mother Mary Alfred Moes in the Diocese of St. Paul of Minnesota. The motherhouse, which is in Rochester, Minnesota, is called Assisi Heights.
In 1876, Sister Mary Alfred Moes, along with her birth sister, Sister Barbara (Catherine) Moes, and 23 other Franciscan Sisters from Joliet, Illinois, came to Rochester, Minnesota, to establish Our Lady of Lourdes School. However, in 1877, a dispute over finances regarding the new academy led Chicago Bishop Thomas Foley to direct the sisters to separate from the Joliet Community. [1]
The congregation founded Saint Marys Hospital (Rochester), which is now part of the Mayo Clinic. The grounds were purchased by the sisters, and the building was erected under the supervision of the Mother Superior. [2] Sister-nurses tended to the sick, cooked the patients’ meals, did the laundry, stoked the furnace and even used the hair of convent horses to make surgical sutures. [3]
The Sisters also continued their work in education, staffing parochial schools in Minnesota and beyond, while also establishing academies in Owatonna and Rochester. Their work included post-secondary education, and in 1894, they founded what would become the College of Saint Teresa in Winona, Minnesota. [4]
Many Sisters work in areas of social service, spiritual care and service abroad. Others continued their ministries in health care and education. [4] The Sisters operate schools and a clinic in Bogotá, Colombia. They also run a spiritual retreat center in Janesville, Minnesota. As of 2004, there were about 300 members of the congregation. [5]
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research. It employs over 7,300 physicians and scientists, along with another 66,000 administrative and allied health staff, across three major campuses: Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona. The practice specializes in treating difficult cases through tertiary care and destination medicine. It is home to the top-15 ranked Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in addition to many of the highest regarded residency education programs in the United States. It spends over $660 million a year on research and has more than 3,000 full-time research personnel.
The Mayo Clinic Hospital – Rochester is a 2,059-bed teaching hospital located in Rochester, Minnesota. It comprises the Saint Marys Campus with its Mayo Eugenio Litta Children's Hospital, as well as its Methodist Campus, forming an integral part of the Mayo Clinic academic medical center. Mayo Clinic Hospital – Rochester is ranked first on the 2019–20 U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Honor Roll.
The University of St. Francis (USF) is a private Franciscan university with its main campus in Joliet, Illinois. It enrolls more than 3,200 students at locations throughout the country with about 1,300 students at its main campus.
Thomas Langdon Grace was an American prelate who served as the second Roman Catholic Bishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
William Worrall Mayo was an English American medical doctor and chemist. He is best known for establishing the private medical practice that later evolved into the Mayo Clinic. His sons, William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, established a joint medical practice in Rochester in the U.S. state of Minnesota in the 1880s.
William James Mayo was a physician and surgeon in the United States and one of the seven founders of the Mayo Clinic. He and his brother, Charles Horace Mayo, both joined their father's private medical practice in Rochester, Minnesota, US, after graduating from medical school in the 1880s. In 1919, that practice became the not-for-profit Mayo Clinic.
Thomas Patrick Roger Foley was a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. He served as Coadjutor Bishop of Chicago from March 10, 1870, until his death on February 19, 1879.
Lourdes University is a private Franciscan university in Sylvania, Ohio. Established in 1958, the university is sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania.
Mary Alfred Moes, was a Roman Catholic nun who was instrumental in establishing first the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate in Joliet, Illinois, as well as the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota. She was also the founder of St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, Minnesota, which became part of the famed Mayo Clinic. Moes had been given a vision from God of a great hospital rising out of the cornfields around Rochester–the little country town, with its one doctor. To that hospital, she had been told in her vision, would come patients from every part of the world and from every nation. And she had seen the name ‘Mayo’ respected the world over for surgical achievements.
The Third Order of Saint Francis is a third order in the Franciscan tradition of Christianity, founded by the medieval Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi.
On August 21, 1883, a devastating tornado affected southeastern portions—the Driftless Area—of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The massive tornado, retrospectively estimated to have been an F5 on the modern Fujita scale, caused at least 37 deaths and over 200 injuries. The tornado was part of a tornado family, a series of tornadoes produced by a supercell, that included at least two significant tornadoes across Southeast Minnesota on August 21. A third significant tornado occurred two hours before the main event hit Rochester. The Rochester tornado indirectly led to the formation of Saint Mary's Hospital, now part of the Mayo Clinic. The tornado closely followed destructive tornadoes a month earlier in the same area: on July 21, two significant, deadly tornadoes hit the area, including an F4 tornado family that killed four people in Dodge and Olmsted Counties, especially near Dodge Center.
The Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, formally known as the Congregation of the Religious Brothers of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, were founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 1858. They have been actively involved in the education of boys and young men, primarily on Long Island, New York, serving the Diocese of Brooklyn since their founding. The Brothers of the congregation use the postnominal initials of O.S.F. Numbering 80 members as of 2008, they are the largest congregation of Religious Brothers founded in America. Formerly a diocesan congregation, in 1989, they became an Institute of Pontifical Right.
The College of Saint Teresa was a Catholic women's college in Winona, Minnesota. Previously a women's seminary, it became a college in 1907 and was operated by the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota until its closing in 1989.
The Lourdes Health System was a pair of two hospitals, Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, New Jersey and Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County in Willingboro, New Jersey. Administrative offices are located at its Camden facility. The Franciscan Sisters of Allegany founded the health system in 1950 and is a member of Trinity Health. On July 1, 2019 Virtua Health purchased both locations from Trinity Health and renamed them.
The Franciscan College of the Immaculate Conception (FCIC) is a private, Catholic basic and higher education institution run by the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration in Baybay, Leyte, Philippines. It is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, who is believed ro have been born without the stain of Original Sin.
Mary Ignatius Hayes, O.S.F., also known as Mother Mary Ignatius of Jesus, was an Anglican religious sister who was later received into the Catholic Church and became a Franciscan sister. Her lifetime of religious service, in the course of which she traveled widely, led to the establishment of three separate religious congregations of Franciscan sisters and the establishment of the Poor Clare nuns in the United States.
Mary Kevin Kearny, OSF, CBE was a teacher, Franciscan Sister, and missionary, who founded a new Franciscan order. Born in Arklow, Ireland on April 28, 1875, she became a Junior Assistant Mistress at 17 and taught in Essex, England. On December 2, 1902, she left to begin missionary work in Nsambya, Uganda, working as a Franciscan Sister of Saint Mary's Abbey, Mill Hill, London.
Women of Mayo Clinic: The Founding Generation is a 2016 non-fiction book by Virginia M. Wright-Peterson, chronicling the individual contributions of professional women who helped establish and develop the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Covering a period of 60 years, the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota worked in conjunction with the Mayo family to open a hospital that would accept patients of all faiths. Beginning with a 27-bed facility, the women physicians and other medical professionals would eventually serve in theaters of war, and create an environment that evolved according to patient needs. Wright-Peterson is a faculty member of the University of Minnesota Rochester, and a former Mayo Clinic administrator.