On Nov. 1, 1933, Bishop Ralph Leo Hayes, fourth Bishop of Helena, celebrated a Pontifical High Mass at St. Joseph Parish in Butte, Montana. The ceremony marked the 100th anniversary of the Founding of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A standing room only crowd spilled out into the vestibule and onto the street, as Portland’s Archbishop Edward Howard opened his homily with these words from sacred Scripture – “Rejoice in the Lord always,” for “these words express the feeling that we all have today.”

Seventy-four years later, we rejoice and give thanks to the Lord as we mark still another momentous milestone in the spiritual journey of this outstanding community. This year, we mark with gratitude a century of service by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Diocese of Helena.

Their mission and ministry has been and remains one of the great forces for good that transformed generations of children and families including my own here in the Diocese of Helena. For that we are eternally grateful.

The Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary came to the Diocese of Helena in 1907.

The country was facing financial panic and a brief depression spawned in part by an unregulated banking industry. Ours was a youthful nation, one bent on flexing newfound military might and making a mark on the world stage. Ours was a nation fascinated by a romanticized version of the American West, thanks to the likes of Mark Twain, Robert Service, and especially Zane Grey, who created a fictional West of heroes and villains, cowboys and Indians – a vision of the West which still endures today.

But the real West was a community in transition, rough and tumble, temperamental and picturesque. It included a colorful city of real life characters called Butte, America.

Butte was a mining camp that morphed overnight into an industrial city. It was a city of overwhelmingly Irish descent, with binding ties to family, faith and homeland.

Butte was a city of immigrants who had been forced to flee their beloved homeland in search of a better future. In the words of historian Kirby Miller, Ireland had had “no jobs, no inheritances, no dowries, no access to the land, no promise – or even a faint hope – of a secure future.” Between 1856 and 1921, in the years following the great famine, 3.7 million Irish left Ireland in search of a better life. Butte was one of the most sought after destinations.

Butte became a community of hard workers willing to risk life and limb for the sake of steady employment. Nine out of 10 workers in Butte were connected to the mining industry. By 1907, Butte was a crowded, rowdy, ever-religious mining city, with new families of immigrants arriving weekly.

This was the environment into which the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary arrived, and the place where they sank deep and lasting roots.

The history of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary can also be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, where the nucleus of the community was formed. Theirs, too, was an environment of suffering and hardship, and a place of tumultuous societal change.

In Dublin, a small band of women – Mary Frances Clark, Margaret Mann, Rose O’Toole, Elizabeth Kelly and Katherine Byrne – came together to serve the poor during the devastating cholera epidemic of 1831. It was this group of women that ministered to the sick and carried out hidden works of mercy that nurtured the bodies and strengthened the souls of the miserable and the dying.

It was this small band of women that was first “touched by God’s steadfast love,” and compelled by the Gospel to meet the needs of the poor and under-served. This small nucleus, under the leadership of Mary Frances Clark, formed the foundation of a new religious community, one that ministered first to the poor of Ireland and then in these United States.

On July 15, 1833, four of the original five departed urban Dublin, and fixed their eyes on far off Philadelphia where the invitation of a kindly priest, Father Terence Donohough, beckoned them to work with the newly arriving Irish immigrants of North America.

They arrived in Philadelphia on Sept. 7, 1833, and opened a school at St. Michael’s Parish that same year. On Nov. 1, 1833, the community of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary was formally founded. Historic documents note that Mary Frances Clark became its first Sister Superior, and created the vision that formed generations of immigrant children and youth in the Catholic faith. The B.V.M. community offered them passports from poverty through the gift of a solid Catholic education.

Among the earliest documents of the Order, we learn that the Community was established “to honor the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph … and to teach young persons in the practice of every virtue, the knowledge of religion and form in their hearts the love of God.”

After a decade of teaching in Philadelphia, the Sisters embarked on a new mission at the invitation of Bishop Matthias Loras, the first Bishop west of the Mississippi. This was a move that transferred the Mother House to Dubuque, Iowa.

Our own Bishop John P. Carroll, second Bishop of Helena, was himself educated by the B.V.M.s in Dubuque, Iowa, where he attended Saint Raphael’s Parochial School. It was there that he first experienced the exceptional charisms of the B.V.M. community, and eventually invited them to serve the children of Butte and Missoula.

The parishes of Immaculate Conception and St. Joseph’s were the first beneficiaries of the community in 1907. Ten years later, the Sisters opened schools at St. John’s Parish and St. Ann’s, down on “the flats.” In 1921, they came to Missoula to the parish of Saint Anthony.

By 1933, at the 100th anniversary of the community, 30,000 students were under the care of the Sisters, in 112 grade schools, high schools and colleges across the land.

Down through the years, thousands of children in the Diocese of Helena, including yours truly, were educated by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We were formed by their goodness, informed by their knowledge, and transformed by their faithfulness. Names like Sister Mary St. Reginald, Sister Mary Alonzo, Sister Mary Magdalene, Sister Paul Joseph, Sister Mary Vivian, Sister Mary Camillus and Sister Mary St. Emily all loom large in my memory, and all have our affection, gratitude and prayer.

Today, the Sisters continue to be a source of blessing here at home and across the globe. Today, while fewer in numbers, they minister in innovative and prophetic ways, ever mindful of the vision of their foundress, and ever present to the Lord in the person of the poor. The words of their constitution say it well – the works they do are “works of love undertaken and performed out of love for God” and their “desire to sensitively respond to those in need.”

Today you will find the Sisters teaching in inner city schools, ministering to death row inmates, providing nursing care to the poor of Guatemala, serving as school superintendents and ecumenical officers and parish administrators and pastoral care providers in hospitals and parishes. In short, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary are called to participate in the mission of Jesus – “being freed and helping others enjoy freedom in God’s steadfast love.”

This is a year of jubilee and celebration. Our Diocese gives thanks to God for the gift that came to us a century ago, and continues to produce abundant spiritual fruit in the lives of our people.

In 1933, Archbishop Howard said it forcefully and well – “Rejoice in the Lord always, again, I say rejoice.” These words of Scripture help us express what we in the Diocese of Helena feel in our hearts. We are grateful to God for the mission and ministry of the B.V.M. community that was born in Ireland and came to us a century ago.

Congratulations to you, our Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for a century of gracious and selfless ministry among our own beloved people. You have given us firm foundation in the faith, and a future brimming with Gospel hope. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 23, No. 7, July 20, 2007.