Mother Caroline Academy & Education Center
515 Blue Hill Avenue
Dorchester, MA 02121

by Mary Luke Baldwm, SSND

Sister Caroline came to America in 1847 at the age of 23. By mid-1848 she had already traveled by riverboat, lake steamer, wagon, stagecoach, and railroad from her sisterhood's headquarters in Baltimore to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Rochester, Philadelphia, and New York. Her guide on this long journey was the Redemptorist Father St. John Neumann. He had invited Blessed Theresa Gerhardinger, foundress of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Sister Caroline to accompany him on a visit to Redemptorist missions in cities where they might consider opening parish schools.

Sister Caroline quickly realized that life in this new world would demand all her creative energy.

Before returning to Germany in 1848, Mother Theresa put Sister Caroline in charge of the SSND schools and business matters. In 1850, she appointed the 26-year-old woman her vicar for North America. By this time there were already 24 sisters, 17 candidates or prospective members, 30 orphans, and about 1,250 pupils in seven schools.

She also directed Mother Caroline to build a motherhouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Bishop John Martin Henni would welcome them. Mother Caroline, with three other sisters and a candidate arrived in Milwaukee on December 15, 1850. Three weeks later she began the first SSND parish school in the West in what is now called Old St. Mary's. By October she had built an annex to the small motherhouse convent and opened St. Mary's Institute, a resident and day school for higher studies. The astute business woman, pioneer educator, and spiritual leader had begun a remarkable lifework.

She moved quickly. She saw needs and responded to them. Were there orphans? The sisters would care for them. The place was poor? She would find funds and dedicated teachers. Too far away? She would travel there and see what could be done.

For ten months of almost every year Mother Caroline traveled thousands of miles back and forth to the east coast, up and down the Mississippi, across the stormy Great Lakes, on muddy country roads, and rumbling railroads. She survived derailments, ferryboat accidents, near shipwreck, and a terrible explosion on a Mississippi steamboat which killed all but 160 of the 500 passengers.

Undaunted, Mother Caroline continued to send Sisters wherever Providence called them: small towns, rural parishes, urban centers. In the words of Bishop Spalding, "She was one of the great wonderworkers of the early years...her influence extended beyond the interests of her order."

During her first years in Milwaukee, Mother Caroline became an American citizen. This land was her land; its people were her people; she loved her Church as the people of God. She worked untiringly to provide schools and orphanages for the children of immigrants -- German, Irish, Polish, Bohemian, French, Dutch, Italian, African Americans--as well as Native Americans. She received women of all cultures and nationalities into her congregation. She helped other religious congregations get started -- even encouraging some of her own young candidates to join them. "We are all serving the same God!" she would say.

In 1881 Mother Caroline became Commissary General of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in North America, a new position established to facilitate the government of the congregation. Elected by her sisters to this post, Mother Caroline continued to promote unity and yet meet the needs of a rapidly growing community. There was now a motherhouse and provincial superior in Baltimore and there would soon be another in St. Louis.

Each of her sisters felt loved by Mother Caroline. The phenomenal growth of the community did not keep her from praying for them one by one. During the last years of her life she prepared a legacy for them. She built the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration at the Milwaukee Motherhouse. Here she hoped her sisters would be drawn to their Lord. Here they would pray always, embracing the needs of the whole world, night and day, year after year.

Mother Caroline died just nine days before the dedication of the Adoration Chapel. Her body was laid out there, and its new bell, named Carolus in her memory, tolled her passing. On it was inscribed in Latin, "Matrem Plango. Filias voco." "The mother I mourn. The daughters I call. "

Mother Caroline is dead. The head of the Western order of the Sisters of Notre Dame passed quietly away at the Notre Dame convent in this city at 7:20 o'clock yesterday morning. She has left a life work's record that will be an endearing monument to her piety and zeal....

Her energy knew no limit and under her guidance schools were organized throughout the country, until now they number more than 200, with an attendance of 70,000 in seventeen states and twenty-nine dioceses....

Mother Caroline was a woman of fine presence and she must have been strikingly beautiful when she was young. She had indomitable courage, great persistency in carrying out all that she undertook and was possessed of fine literary attainments. Her good deeds and the charm of her personal character had made her beloved wherever she was known.

Josephine Friess, the future Mother Caroline, was born August 21, 1824 in a suburb of Paris of a French mother and German father. She grew up in Bavaria, where she entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame, receiving the name Sister Mana Karolina.

"She was a friend in need when the outlook for us was very dark."

Archbishop F.X. Katzer of Milwaukee: "A valiant woman....she possessed an uncommonly clear understanding a penetrating judgment remarkable will-power--all these combined with the most winning goodness of heart unselfish kindness deep and tender feeling really astonishing prudence in the most trying circumstances of her life. Her heart was full of loving sympathy for all the sorrows and joys of others....Hers was a manly spirit in the best and most beautiful sense of the word. she possessed everything in the character of a man that is an ornament to woman as well..."

City official to the unemployed: "Try that big-hearted mother superior on the hill."

Elias Fred Schauer, C.SS.R.: "...One of the brightest lights of her sex in the Catholic Church of America. She was an apostolic woman who knew her mission in behalf of rising Catholic generations..."

Archbishop John Ireland: "Thanks be to God for having given us Mother Caroline. That noble saintly woman has been a blessing to the Church in America for nearly half a century. She was a power for good in all our dioceses."

An artist much in demand was once asked whether he would have time to paint her portrait. In astonishment he replied: "Why it would take me three months to paint those eyes! And then perhaps not do justice to them."

From the five pioneer Sisters who arrived in New York in 1847, the North American branch of School Sisters of Notre Dame has grown to almost 4,000 in eight provinces and three regions. Provincial headquarters in North America are in Baltimore, Maryland; Waterdown, Ontario; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Mankato, Minnesota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; St. Louis, Missouri; and Wilton, Connecticut. Three regions, all administered by native sisters, are Puerto Rico, Japan, and Guam.

Sisters from North America continue to serve in the spirit of Mother Caroline in 40 states and six Canadian provinces. Like her they have moved out cross-culturally to serve in 14 countries of Africa and Central and South America. Japanese Sisters are now in Nepal; Puerto Ricans in the Dominican Republic and Haiti; Guamanians on the islands of Yap and Ebeye.

Like Mother Caroline, today's SSNDs are committed to education from pre-school to university, in parish and diocesan programs, in tutorial and advocacy services for the poor and for new immigrants, in counseling, spiritual direction, and retreats.

Like her they collaborate with priests and bishops, sometimes as pastoral associates, parish administrators, superintendents of schools, vicars for religious, chancellors of dioceses.

Like her they unite with other dedicated women and men both within the church and ecumenically in promoting Gospel values in their communities--especially in efforts to meet human needs, develop a just society, and make the concerns of the poor their own.

Whatever their ministry--whether teaching fourth grade, staffing a shelter for battered women, continuing a ministry of prayer at a retirement center, serving as administrator at a women's college--North American SSNDs in all their ethnic and ministerial diversity are proud to claim Mother Caroline as theirs. They recognize her in the words of the prologue of their constitution, YOU ARE SENT: "Mother Caroline Friess, who, through courageous leadership, adapted the congregation to life on another continent, perceptively reading the signs of the times, risking innovative response to the needs of the new world."

Founded in Bavaria (Germany) in 1833 by Blessed Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger, the School Sisters of Notre Dame today number nearly 7,000 members. They are organized into 21 provinces and three regions under the central government of a general superior. Their international headquarters is in Rome at Via della Stazione Aurelia 95.

School Sisters of Notre Dame minister in more than 30 countries in east and west Europe, in North, Central and South America, in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Two of the most recent missions were established by sisters from the Polish province who went to The Gambia in Africa and to Russia.