America’s Catholic Patriots

The Sisters of Loretto received recognition in this piece posted on the USCCB website as part of the “We hold These Truths” series.

When it comes to our Church’s history, we Catholics tend to zero in quickly on canonized saints and those we hope will be canonized. This is understandable, given the importance our faith places on special exemplars of holiness and the supernatural virtues.  Often, though, we highlight well-known saints to the exclusion of the much larger tapestry of Catholic experiences and achievements in which our most celebrated, canonized figures’ lives are interwoven. 

This is true, for example, where the Church in the United States is concerned. We American Catholics tend to lack even basic familiarity with the range of men and women among us who—while not in most cases deserving the honors of the altar—helped to make the United States both a powerful nation and one ever striving to improve itself morally and socially.   

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Our nation owes a special debt to Catholics—especially religious sisters—for advances in wartime nursing and hospital services. …

Religious sisters such Mother Mariana Flynn of the Daughters of Charity and Mother Mary Anthony Bordeaux of the Congregation of American Sisters would serve similarly in the Spanish-American War. Bordeaux, of the Lakota people in South Dakota, was among the first Native American women recognized by the Army for military nursing service. Sisters of Loretto, Ursulines, and women of other congregations would also staff military hospitals during World War I, including in the difficult conditions of Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, where more than ten thousand soldiers were hospitalized due to the global flu pandemic of 1918.  

Read the entire piece on the USCCB website.