By Sister Kathleen Marie D.C.

The community of the Daughters of Charity was founded in Paris, France, November 29, 1633, by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac.

St. Vincent had organized in Paris a group of generous laywomen, known as the Ladies of Charity, whose aim was to provide for the needs of the sick and the poor of that troubled period. Devoted and responsible helpers were needed and were found among the peasant girls who desired to serve God and their neighbor.

St. Vincent set St. Louis de Marillac, a widow, to the work of training these young servants of the poor in both spiritual and temporal matters.

Since, at that time of St. Vincent, the term “religious” designated “cloistered nuns,” it was unknown to have a community of women living a religious life outside of the cloister. St. Vincent wanted his spiritual Daughters free to serve the sick and the poor in their homes and wherever else the service of the poor called them.

According to St. Vincent, the Daughters of Charity ordinarily have: “for monastery, the houses of the sick; for cell, a rented room; for chapel, the parish church; for cloister, the streets of the city and the wards of hospitals; for enclosure, obedience; for grating, the fear of God; for veil, holy modesty.”

For their characteristic spirit, St. Vincent gave his Daughters the virtues of humility, simplicity, and charity, also stressing that they should be daughters of the Church. After a five-year period of formation, a Daughter of Charity makes for the first time the four vows of service of the poor, chastity, poverty, and obedience.

These vows are renewed each year by every Daughter of Charity on the day the church celebrates the feast of Annunciation. The vows are made to the Superior General of the Daughters of Charity and of the Congregation of the Mission known as the Vincentian Fathers.

This community of priests was likewise founded by St. Vincent, and because of its similar spirit, the priests have been the spiritual directors of the Daughters of Charity from the foundation of the community.

The company of the Daughters of Charity was brought to the United States through the instrumentality of Blessed Elizabeth Ann Seton, then known simply as Mother Seton. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, a widow with five children, had become a convert to Catholicism in 1805.

Deprived of earning a livelihood for herself and her children in her native New York due to the prejudice of her family and former friends who opposed her conversion, she accepted an invitation from Rev. Louis G. Dubourg, S.S., the President of St. Mary’s College, Baltimore, Maryland, to establish a Catholic school for girls there. Several young women joined her, also desiring to serve God and she moved to a farm, the gift of Samuel Cooper at Emmitsburg, Maryland on July 31, 1809.

A school was started by her for poor country girls of the area, thus initiating the American parochial system. At this time, the little group of sisters gathering under the leadership of Mother Seton were guided by the Sulpician Fathers according to the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul and modeled on the French community of Daughters of Charity.

This little community developed and desired to become part of the French community. After several petitions for union of the American Sisters with the original parish foundation had been addressed to its major Superiors, an affirmative answer was given in 1848.

On March 25, 1850, the American Sisters made their vows for the first time to the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission. With its Provincial House located at Emmitsburg, Maryland, the community and its work grew until in 1910 the expansion of the Province of the United States showed need for a division into two provinces, with a second Provincial House in St. Louis, Missouri for the western province.

In 1969, further division of these two provinces became necessary, thus establishing a total of five provinces in the United States.

In our Southeast Province with its provincial house at Emmitsburg, Maryland, we have 652 sisters working in eight hospitals, 11 welfare works and 22 schools. There are five more schools in which the Daughters of Charity participate in an inter-community situation.

The Daughters came to the Archdiocese of Atlanta in August of 1971 to staff St. Mary’s School from which the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Michigan found it necessary to withdraw.