An Unquenchable Thirst


Book Description

At seventeen, Mary Johnson saw a photo of Mother Teresa on the cover of TIME magazine, and experienced her calling. Eighteen months later she entered a convent in the South Bronx, to begin her religious training. Not without difficulty, this boisterous, independent-minded teenager eventually adapted to the sisters' austere life of poverty and devotion, but beneath the white-and-blue sari an ordinary woman faced the struggles we all share, with the desires of love and connection, meaning and identity. During her years as a Missionary of Charity, Mary Johnson rose quickly through the ranks and came to work alongside Mother Teresa. Mary grapped with her faith, her desires for intimacy, the politics of the order and her complicated relationship with Mother Teresa. Finally, she made the hard, life-changing decision to leave the order to find her own path, and eventually to leave the Church altogether. The story of this compellingly honest woman will speak to anyone who has ever grappled with the mysteries and wonders of life and faith.




The Missionary Sisters


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Mother Cabrini


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In 1946, Francesca Cabrine was canonized as the first saint of the United States. This Vision Book tells the exciting story of this missionary from Italy who came to America to spread the Faith and to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.




Dear Mother Dear Father


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Born in Victoria, Fr John Wallis (1910-2001), Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Hobart, founded the Australian Religious Order, the Missionary Sisters of Service, in Tasmania, in 1944. The Sisters were to be available to go into the highways and byways; and flexible to meet the pastoral needs of isolated communities throughout Australia. This series of letters to John's parents and family gives us a rare and precious insight into his life as a seminarian and young priest. They also reflect a growing development of his piety and spiritualty, where seeds were sown that would develop into his deep concern for people, especially the poor and the marginalised in rural and outback areas of Australia, and for ways to meet their pastoral and social needs. The letters have been arranged in ten chapters, with a general introduction about that period in John's life. Each letter itself has a commentary that contextualises the letter, providing biographical and other details that make the entire series come to life, tracing his experiences, development, misgivings and plans. They anticipate his enthusiasm for the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council and played such a part in his priestly ministry. The series of letters in each chapter close with insightful reflections from eminent Australians who consider John's character and spiritual growth as well as applying his insights into contemporary Church life in Australia. 'Bernadette Wallis has provided the contemporary reader with a lovingly familiar insight into the development and vision of one of Australia's great pioneer priests...' Fr Frank Brennan SJ




Immigrant Saint


Book Description

Francesca Maria Cabrini was born in 1850 in a small village on the Lombard Plain of Italy. At the moment of her birth, a cloud of snow-white doves appeared and circled the village, an augury of her future sanctity. Tiny frail and sickly, she was enthralled as a child by tales of the adventures of missionaries to faraway lands, and grew up with one burning desire: to join a religious order and tend to the physical and spiritual needs of the people of China. But no order would have her—her health was deemed too precarious. But her dream remained, and she set out to see it realized. Her first step, a formidable one, was obtaining an audience with His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII. This she did, after overcoming many obstacles. It was a meeting that would change her life, and the lives of so many in America. Mother Cabrini was granted her wish to start an orphanage abroad-but not in China, as she had requested. “Not East, but West, my child,” said Pope Leo, and her path was set. PIETRO DI DONATO’S Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini is a powerful nonfiction account of a woman whose gripping story of perseverance, courage, and profound godliness serves as a paradigm for the new age of faith. Written in the fluid prose that made it a huge popular success upon its initial publication in 1960, Immigrant Saint is a book that makes us re-examine, and ultimately reaffirm, our belief in the possibilities of prayer, the validity of miracles, and the crucial importance of good works. “...eloquent, fascinating, miraculous”—Saturday Review




Sisters Crossing Boundaries


Book Description

The last third of the 19th century witnessed a considerable increase in the active participation of women in the various Christian missions. Katharina Stornig focusses onthe Catholic case, and particularly explores the activities and experiences of German missionary nuns, the so-called Servants of the Holy Spirit,in colonial Togo and New Guinea in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Introducing the nuns' ambiguous roles as travelers, evangelists, believers, domestic workers, farmers, teachers, and nurses, Stornig highlights the ways in which these women shaped and were shaped by the missionary encounter and how they affected colonial societies more generally. Privileging the sources produced by nuns (i.e. letters, chronicles and reports) and emphasizing their activities, Sisters Crossing Boundaries profoundly challenges the frequent depiction of women and particularly nuns as the largely passive observers of the missionizing and colonizing activities of men. Stornig does not stop at adding women to the existing historical narrative of mission in Togo and New Guinea, but presents the hopes and strategies that German nuns related to the imagination and practice of empire. She also discusses the effects of boundary-crossing, both real and imagined, in the context of religion, gender and race.




The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family


Book Description

The Sisters of the Holy Family, founded in New Orleans in 1842, were the first African American Catholics to serve as missionaries. This story of their little-known missionary efforts in Belize from 1898 to 2008 builds upon their already distinguished work, through the Archdiocese of New Orleans, of teaching slaves and free people of color, caring for orphans and the elderly, and tending to the poor and needy. Utilizing previously unpublished archival documents along with extensive personal correspondence and interviews, Edward T. Brett has produced a fascinating account of the 110-year mission of the Sisters of the Holy Family to the Garifuna people of Belize. Brett discusses the foundation and growth of the struggling order in New Orleans up to the sisters' decision in 1898 to accept a teaching commitment in the Stann Creek District of what was then British Honduras. The early history of the British Honduras mission concentrates especially on Mother Austin Jones, the superior responsible for expanding the order's work into the mission field. In examining the Belizean mission from the eve of the Second Vatican Council through the post–Vatican II years, Brett sensitively chronicles the sisters' efforts to conform to the spirit of the council and describes the creative innovations that the Holy Family community introduced into the Belizean educational system. In the final chapter he looks at the congregation's efforts to sustain its missionary work in the face of the shortage of new religious vocations. Brett’s study is more than just a chronicle of the Holy Family Sisters' accomplishments in Belize. He treats the issues of racism and gender discrimination that the African American congregation encountered both within the church and in society, demonstrating how the sisters survived and even thrived by learning how to skillfully negotiate with the white, dominant power structure.




True Sisters


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Four women seeking the promise of salvation and prosperity in a new land.




Blessed Marie of New France


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"It's almost upon us!" yelled a frantic voice as the ship neared the iceberg. "God's Will be done," prayed Mother Marie. If God wanted her to drown in the icy Atlantic Ocean before ever reaching Canada, may His Holy Will be done. Yet what happened next is what the Sisters experienced -- one adventure after another in a quest to bring the One, Holy, and Apostolic Catholic Faith to Canada.




God Has Been God for Us


Book Description

GOD HAS BEEN GOD FOR US In 1929, just at the onset of the Great Depression, San Antonio diocesan priest, Peter Baque, pastor of St. Peter Prince of the Apostles Catholic Church on North Broadway, found himself unable to meet the needs of a segment of his parish then known as "Cementville." This small village was a company town under the auspices of the Alamo Portland Cement Company whose residents all worked in the cement quarry on the northern edge of Baque's parish. Baque, believing that the people of Cementville would be receptive to the ministry of women religious, decided that this was the time to begin a community of women who would be especially ready to "reach out with a loaf of bread in one hand and the love of Christ in the other." With the help of Eugenie Olivier Edwards, the widowed mother of nine living children who professed her vows as Mother Theresa, Baque began the Missionary Servants of St. Anthony. God Has Been God for Us chronicles the eighty-year history of this religious community. From the depression years until the present day, the Sisters have supported Father Baque's dream to foster devotion to St. Anthony de Padua through the Shrine to St. Anthony which is now an adoration chapel on their property in front of St. Anthony de Padua Parish. Other ministries of the Missionary Servants established during these 80 years include a home for Catholic working girls in downtown San Antonio; a day nursery now celebrating 75 years of service; Padua Place, a home for infirm or aging priests in its 50th year of operation; and a retreat center located at the motherhouse property at 100 Peter Baque Road. Relying solely on the providential care of God, the Missionary Servants of St. Anthony evidence the character of missionaries instilled in them by Father Baque and the humility and simplicity of servitude modeled for them by Mother Theresa. Their story will inspire the reader to say with them "God has been God for me." Sister Diane Langford, CDP, a Sister of Divine Providence for 30 years, writes, gives retreats, and teaches adult Catholics who want to grow in the faith. This is her third book. She has written a manual to be used in teaching adults who are preparing to be Catholics and The Tattered Heart, a historical fiction biography of Mother St. Andrew Feltin, Texas foundress of the Sisters of Divine Providence of San Antonio, Texas.