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The history of the Notre
Dame congregation is a history of working to strengthen families. The vision
of Blessed Alix LeClerc and St. Peter Fourier, who worked together to found
the congregation in France in 1537, was to educate girls so that they might
bring faith into family life. This vision was repeated in Father Gabriel
Schneider in Bohemia in 1853, when the congregation was refounded. Teaching
children and girls remained an important focus of the Notre Dame community
as the Sisters established an American Province in 1910. The Sisters began
in the United State by working at an orphanage in Fenton, Missouri. They
quickly spread across the midwestern United States, teaching in predominantly
Czech schools and working at Father Flanagan's Boy's Home. In 1926 the Sisters
established Notre Dame Academy, an elementary and a high school for girls,
accommodating boarding students and local day students. By the 1960's, changing
social needs prompted the Sisters to examine the ways they could best continue
to support and strengthen family life. Nursing, social work, pastoral ministry
in parishes, chaplaincy, spiritual direction, counseling and other ways
of serving families became paths for the Sisters to fulfill their call to
service. The Family Life Office of the Omaha Archdiocese became the inspiration
and conduit for the work of some of the Notre Dame Sisters, who made significant
world-wide contributions to marriage preparation. The Sisters were also
instrumental in the creation of the first shelter for battered women and
their children in Omaha. Many Sisters continued to work in the field of
education after the closing of Notre Dame Academy in 1974, working with
universities as well as elementary and secondary schools. In the 1990's
the Sisters gave part of their Motherhouse and surrounding land to sponsor
housing for seniors, perceiving that older family members faced a great
need for safe, affordable independent living units. The first part of the
new century found the Sisters working with Catholic Charities to help provide
transitional housing for women and their children who needed help learning
a new, non-violent lifestyle after leaving The Shelter. In these and many
other works, the Notre Dame Sisters continue to advocate for the benefit
of families, following the vision of the founders of the congregation. |
