women & spirit | Catholic Sisters in America

The exhibit, “Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” opens Sunday at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood, and runs through Aug. 28. For ticket information, call (216) 593-0575.

Web sites: www.maltzmuseum.org and www.womenandspirit.org

Sponsors: ”Women & Spirit” is a project of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in association with Cincinnati Museum Center.

From Northeast Ohio: The exhibit tells the story of women religious in Northeast Ohio. With more than a dozen congregations headquartered in the region, and numerous sister-sponsored hospitals, colleges, schools and outreach organizations, this perspective on our civic life is sponsored by a regional collaborative organization of religious orders. Sister Ignatia Gavin of the Sisters of Charity, worked with Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Dr. Bob Smith to admit the first alcoholic patient to St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, it became the first hospital in the world to treat alcoholism as a medical condition. Sister Dorothy Kazel of the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland taught for many years for the Diocese of Cleveland before going to El Salvador, providing relief services, education and work with refugees. She was murdered there, along with two Maryknoll sisters and one laywoman from Cleveland, by members of the El Salvadoran National Guard.

Pioneer spirit: Among artifacts are a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Sister Therese de St. Xavier Farjon, OSU, dated May 15, 1804; diary of Sister Clare Joseph Dickinson recounting her cross-Atlantic journey in 1790 to help start the first community in the nation’s original 13 states; and shoe crafted from braided corn husks and worn by pioneer sisters.

Facing prejudice: Charred altar missal from a convent in Charlestown, Mass., burned to the ground in an outbreak of anti-Catholic fervor; student work from the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first all black community; and document requesting forgiveness for past involvement in slavery from communities in Kentucky.

Health care: A nurse’s bag used during the Civil War by Sister Anthony O’Connell of the Sisters of Charity; pewter mortar and pestle honoring Sister Xavier Hebert, America’s first woman pharmacist (replica, 1985); first medical license given to a woman in new Mexico, issued to Sister Mary de Sales Leheney, SC, in 1901; and infant incubator, based on a prototype made by Sister Pulcheria Wuellner from a cigar humidor in 1938.

Source: www.womenandspirit.org