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About our Foundress,
Elizabeth Prout: In staying in Manchester, Mother Mary Joseph and her little band exemplified a different kind of thinking about religious life. They might have used words like these to describe it:
But Manchester (right) needed nuns. In 1853 Mother Mary Joseph responded to the wish of a new parish, St Joseph's, for a school. Two little rooms, located a painful distance from the convent (Mother Mary Joseph's knee problems continued), soon overflowed with children of poor Irish Catholics. Mother Mary Joseph saw clearly that education offered the only means of improving the futures of these children. Besides, who else would tell these children of God's love for them -- even the wild ones! The sisters' efforts succeeded, despite the agony of the long walks (often on an empty stomach) for Mother Mary Joseph. Then, disaster struck. One of the sisters at the school caught typhoid fever. It spread throughout the community. They could not work; no money came in. Early records report that:
Except for the help given by some religious orders and good friends, the little Institute's life would have ended. One such friend was a physician who donated his services and also arranged for the Sisters to go for a rest at the house of a priest-friend's; it was vacant at the time. In addition to Mother Mary Joseph's responsibilities for the temporal concerns of the beleaguered community, she shouldered the burden of responsibility for the spiritual well-being and formation of the sisters. At the same time, she dealt with instructions from Fr Gaudentius to do things for which the Institute simply had no money. He seemed unaware of what it was like to live among the poor in Manchester and he probably lacked experience in working with formation of a women's religious institute. In 1855 his superiors sent him to work in the United States. a decade of challenge and reward
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Today
we are accustomed to hearing such ideals. The Manchester folk of Elizabeth's
day were probably less sanguine in their response. Indeed, many of Manchester's
priests and nuns criticized the new Institute for its 'revolutionary
ideas'. According to this new idea, the sisters would support themselves
and also find time for a strong prayer life. In practice, it was difficult
for the sisters to survive the hardships of the period and, for a time,
it looked as if the nay-sayers would be proved right.
