The Congregation's Own Course: Separation, Autonomy, Approbation

1857–1896, and the line of superiors

Three branches of one family. The Holy Cross that planted itself at the bend in 1841–43 was one congregation of priests, brothers, and sisters under Moreau. It did not stay one body. In 1857 the sisters separated from the priests and brothers. On 11 July 1869 a decree of autonomy issued for the Indiana sisters, and on 26 July 1869 they separated from the Marianites and became an autonomous congregation — the Sisters of the Holy Cross of Notre Dame, Indiana, one of the three congregations of women religious that descend from Moreau's foundation, beside the Marianites of Holy Cross in Louisiana and the Sisters of Holy Cross at Montreal. Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati held the superior general's powers for the new congregation and delegated them to Father Sorin, who held them from 1869 to 1889. The constitutions received provisional approbation on 2 March 1889, and that year the congregation elected its first American superior general, Mother M. Augusta (Anderson), whose election the archives' lines date to the summer of 1889 — 25 July in one line of the guide, August in another; both stand. Final approbation of the constitutions followed on 12 May 1896.

The line of superiors. The archives' leadership line runs: Mother Augusta, 1889–1895; Mother Annunciata, 1895–1900, who died in office; Mother Perpetua, 1900–1919; Mother Aquina, 1919–1925; Mother Francis Clare, 1925–1931; Mother Vincentia, 1931–1943; Mother Rose Elizabeth, 1943–1955; Mother Kathryn Marie, 1955–1967; Mother Olivette, 1967–1973 — the superior general who signed the 1971 merger agreement and then told a Saint Mary's convocation why it could not stand, in the college article below — and on through Sister Kathleen Ann Nelligan (1973–1979) and her successors to Sister M. Veronique Wiedower (2014–2024) and Sister Sharlet Ann Wagner, who leads the congregation for the 2024–2029 term; the congregation styles its head president in its modern documents. The archives' entrants table measures the century: entrances peaked in 1956–60 with 344 women, fell dramatically after 1965 — thirteen entrants in 1971–75 — and have run at thirty to fifty each five years since the 1980s. At the golden jubilee of the motherhouse in 1905 the congregation's own annals counted nearly one thousand professed sisters, scholastics, novices, and postulants ministering in convents, academies, parish schools, hospitals, and orphan asylums to something like ten thousand people — the measure of what fifty years had made of the four sisters of 1843. On 4 May 1958 the last group of sisters left the convent on the campus of Notre Dame: the working presence of the sisters inside the university itself, unbroken since the log chapel attic of 1843, ended across the river at their own motherhouse.

Sources

1. HARC, Archival Reference Guide — the chronology of the sisters (1857 separation; autonomy 1869; approbations 1889 and 1896; the last sisters leave Notre Dame, 4 May 1958), the leadership lines, and the table of entrants.
2. Sisters of the Holy Cross, "History" (cscsisters.org) — the three present-day congregations of women religious descending from Moreau.
3. Catholic Encyclopedia, "Sisters of the Holy Cross" — the 1869–1889 delegation of the superior general's powers to Sorin.
4. Saint Mary's College news release, 17 March 2021 — the congregation's president in its modern style.