Grey Nuns

Canadian Roman Catholic institution

For other uses, see Grey Nuns (disambiguation).

The Sisters of Charity of Montreal

Saint Marguerite d'Youville, in the former habit of the institute

Formation| 1738
Type| Religious organization
Legal status| active
Purpose| Public advocation, education, and network
Headquarters| Montreal, Quebec

Region served

* Canada
* United States
* Colombia
* Brazil
* Japan
* Haiti
* Central African Republic
* South Africa
* Papua New Guinea
* Paraguay
* Argentina
* Uruguay
* Bahamas
* Dominican Republic

Official language

| English
French
Website| www.sgm.qc.ca

The Sisters of Charity of Montreal, formerly called The Sisters of Charity of the Hôpital Général of Montreal and more commonly known as the Grey Nuns of Montreal, is a Canadian religious institute of Roman Catholic religious sisters, founded in 1737 by Marie-Marguerite d'Youville, a young widow.[1]

## History

[edit]

Further information: Marie-Marguerite d'Youville

Grey Nuns convent in Montreal (circa 1880)

The congregation was founded when Marguerite d'Youville and three of her friends formed a religious association to care for the poor. They rented a small house in Montreal on 30 October 1738, taking in a small number of destitute persons. On 3 June 1753 the society received a royal sanction, which also transferred to them the rights and privileges previously granted by letters patent in 1694 to the Frères Hospitaliers de la Croix et de Saint-Joseph (French for 'Hospitaller Brothers of the Cross and of Saint Joseph'), known after their founder as the Frères Charon. At that time they also took over the work of the bankrupt Frères Charon at the Hôpital Général de Montréal ('Montreal General Hospital') located outside the city walls. (In the seventeenth century, a general hospital was an institution that took in old people, the ill, and the poor. Medical care was dispensed at the Hôtel-Dieu.)[2]

In 1755 the sisters cared for those stricken during a smallpox epidemic. As the sisters were not cloistered, they could go out to visit the sick. Those assisted included the First Nations people in Oka, who were among the benefactors who later helped rebuild the hospital after a fire in 1765.[2]

After 1840 the order rapidly expanded, and over the next 100 years became a major provider of health care and other social services throughout Quebec, Western and Northern Canada, and the northern United States.[3] In 1855, the Grey Nuns were called to Toledo, Ohio, to care for many suffering from cholera.[4] St. Vincent's later became part of Catholic Health Partners.

St. Joseph Hospital was founded in 1906 in Nashua, New Hampshire, by the parish of St. Louis de Gonzague primarily to serve Nashua's French Canadian community. The Grey Nuns began to staff it in 1907. The hospital was dedicated on 1 May 1908,[5] the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. The sisters also started a nursing school. In 1938, the parish transferred ownership to the sisters.[6]

In 1983 the Grey Nuns established Covenant Health Systems, a non-profit Catholic regional health care system, to direct, support and conduct their health care, elder care and social service systems throughout New England.[7] In 1996, sponsorship of St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua was transferred from the sisters to Covenant Health Systems.

### Participation in the residential school system

[edit]

The Grey Nuns worked as nurses and teachers in a number of Indian residential schools, as the preferred missionary partners of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate,[8]: 30  who were not allowed to teach girls.[8]: 96  The Oblates paid parents to allow their children to attend boarding schools. At the schools, they participated in the effort to remove children from their traditional Indigenous ways of life, in order to "civilize" them.[8]: 92

The main goal of the Oblates and the Grey Nuns was to provide a Catholic education (in competition with schools operated by Anglicans) and to give a limited secular education. These early mission boarding schools never recruited more than a small percentage of the school-aged children in the region.[8]: 96  Though often at odds, the Canadian government and the various religious organizations operating residential schools agreed that Indigenous cultural practices had to be suppressed.[8]: 627

Students at the schools were subjected to physical and sexual abuse;[9]: 104–107  insufficient food;[9]: 88–89  and being forbidden to speak their native languages or engage in their cultural practices.[9]: 4–6  This treatment has been deemed cultural genocide by the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[9]: 8 [failed verification]

The sisters worked at one of the most notorious schools, St. Anne's Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ontario, where a homemade electric chair was reportedly used on the children for the amusement of the staff, among other severe abuses. Survivor testimony later sparked a long-running Ontario Provincial Police investigation; two nuns were eventually convicted of assault for their actions at St Anne's.[10] The sisters also worked at the Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan. The Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Métis Community have hired archaeologists from the University of Alberta to search the grounds of the school for unmarked graves reported by former students. The search began in March 2022.[11]: 14 [12]

Other residential schools where the sisters worked include Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School,[8]: 96  Lac la Biche (Notre Dame des Victoires) Residential School,[8]: 95  St. Albert (Youville) Residential School,[8]: 95  Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School,[8]: ix  St. Boniface Residential School,[8]: 690  Assiniboia Indian Residential School,[13]: 241  Shubenacadie Indian Residential School,[8]: 241  Fort Providence Residential School,[8]: 707  Blue Quills Residential School,[14]: 90  the residence at Fort Smith,[15]: 50  Fort Resolution Indian Residential School,[15]: 149  and Chesterfield Inlet (Turquetil Hall) Residential School.[14]: 439

The Sisters and the Oblates objected to the characterization of their actions during the IRSSA process, stating that they felt many students had positive experiences and that some of their members had been falsely accused.[16]: 168

As of 2018[update], the Sisters had not turned over several thousand photos and records which they had promised to return to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.[17] As of 2021[update], the Catholic Church as a whole had not issued a formal apology for its role in the residential school system, although some dioceses and orders had issued their own apologies.[18]

## Name

[edit]

Montreal residents mocked the nuns by calling them les grises – a phrase meaning both "the grey women" and "the drunken women", in reference to the colour of their attire and Marguerite d'Youville's late husband, François-Magdeleine You d'Youville (1700–1730), a notorious bootlegger. Marguerite and her colleagues adopted the particular black and beige dress of their religious institute in 1755; despite a lack of grey colour, they kept the nickname.[19] When a Grey Nun worked as a nurse in a hospital, she usually exchanged her taupe habit for a white one.[20] They wore a bonnet instead of a veil, as that was more practical for everyday work.[2]

## Constitution

[edit]

The monastic rule, given to d'Youville and her companions by the Sulpician priest Louis Normant de Faradon in 1745, received episcopal sanction in 1754 when Monseigneur de Pontbriant formed the society into an official religious community. This rule forms the basis of the present constitution, which was approved by Pope Leo XIII on 30 July 1880. Besides the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the sisters pledge themselves to devote their lives to the service of suffering humanity.[citation needed]

## Sister communities

[edit]

Convent of Deschambault, held by the Sisters of Charity of Quebec between 1861 and 1994

The sisters undertook the first mission by a female religious institute to Western Canada in 1844, when a colony of Grey Nuns left their convent in Montreal and travelled to St. Boniface, on the shore of the Red River.[21] Several sister communities branched off from the Sisters of Charity of Montreal:

### Sisters of Charity of Saint-Hyacinthe

[edit]

The congregation was founded by Marie-Michel-Archange Thuot (Mother Thuot). She joined the Grey nuns in 1803. She served in the infirmary and pharmacy, and later became mistress of novices. In 1840, Thuot and three other sisters left Montreal to establish a community in the rural farming community of Saint-Hyacinthe,[22] and soon founded a Hôtel-Dieu for their health care ministry. As a way to raise funds to support themselves and their ministry, they also took in female pensionnaires.[23]

In response to increased industrialization of the area, in 1864 they founded the workhouse of Saint Geneviève to "procure work for the poor women when they are unable to find any on the outside."[20] The workhouse produced woollen fabric and soap, and provided employment for ten women, fifteen girls, one man, and three boys. They became a separate pontifical congregation in 1896.

In 1888 the sisters founded the first hospital in Lewiston, Maine, called variously "the Sisters' Hospital", "the French Hospital", or "the Catholic Hospital".[24] In 1902 the Sisters moved to a larger building that came to be called L'Hopital Generale Ste. Marie ('St. Mary's General Hospital'). St. Mary's developed into Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center.

### Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart

[edit]

Koessler Administration Building at D'Youville College

The only American congregation of Grey Nuns, the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart branched off from the Ottawa congregation in 1921, to establish an independent English-speaking congregation to minister in the United States.[25] They founded D'Youville College in Buffalo, New York. In 1966, the mother house moved to Yardley, Pennsylvania. The sisters serve in a variety of ministries in the East Coast states New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts as well as in Georgia and Alaska.

* the Sisters of Charity of the Hôtel-Dieu of Nicolet (1886), branched off from Saint-Hyacinthe, united with Montreal (1941)
* the Sisters of Charity of Ottawa (1845), formerly the Grey Nuns of the Cross
* the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (1926), branched off from Ottawa
* the Sisters of Charity of Quebec (1849)

## The 21st century

[edit]

Statue to the Grey Nuns, Quebec City

As of 2008 the various Grey Nun branches operate in Canada, the United States, Colombia, Brazil, Japan, Haiti, Central African Republic, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic.[26][27]

### Hospitals

[edit]

They once operated a number of major hospitals in Canada; as provincial governments and church, authorities moved to standardize both ownership and operation of hospitals, many of these hospitals passed into the hands of Church corporations (or, in some cases, governmental organizations) and the Grey Nuns changed focus. The Grey Nuns' Hospital building built in 1765 in Montreal was designated a national Historic Site of Canada in 1973 to commemorate the Grey Nuns.[28] In 2011, Grey Nuns Motherhouse, the former motherhouse of the Grey Nuns in Montreal, now part of Concordia University, was also designated a National Historic Site.[29]

### Shelters

[edit]

They now operate shelters for battered women (with and without children), shelters for women in need, clothing and food dispensaries, centres for the disabled, and some health care facilities. St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg is still owned by the Grey Nuns; hospitals previously owned, operated, or enlarged by the institute include the former Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary,[30] St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon,[31] and the Grey Nuns Community Hospital in Edmonton.[32] Many of these health care institutions were founded by missionary nuns sent out from convents in Quebec and Ontario.[32]

### Other works

[edit]

Grey Nuns may work with the incarcerated.[27] Some chapters are also dedicated to peace and justice; at least one chapter, the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, has declared its properties a nuclear-free zone.[33]

## Classification as religious sisters

[edit]

Although the institute's informal name contains the word nuns, members are actually classified by the Roman Catholic Church as religious sisters, as they are not cloistered and belong to a congregation, not an order. They no longer wear their distinctive habit and now wear street clothes.[27]

## Numbers

[edit]

In 1993 it was estimated that there were just under 3,000 Grey Nuns in Canada, mainly in Quebec and Ontario.[21] In March 2013, the Mother House in downtown Montreal was vacated by its remaining Grey Nuns, after having sold the property to Concordia University in 2005.[34][35] The building was subsequently renovated. The Quebec congregation has not recruited any new members since before 2000. Sister Bernadette said the nuns' legacy will live on in other ways.[36]

## See also

[edit]

* Covenant Health Systems

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Marie–Marguerite d'Youville at the Vatican Liturgy of Saints Project Archived 27 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 26 August 2008.
2. ^ a b c "'History', The Grey Nuns of Montreal" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 February 2017. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
3. ^ Everett-Green, Robert (29 March 2013). "Dwindling Grey Nuns leave downtown Montreal convent after more than a century". The Globe and Mail – via www.theglobeandmail.com.
4. ^ ""160 years after its founding, Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center is still mission-focused", Healthy Living News, November 2020". Archived from the original on 15 November 2015. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
5. ^ "10 Things to Know About St. Joseph Hospital". www.beckershospitalreview.com. 16 July 2012.
6. ^ "Our Mission".
7. ^ "Covenant Health - Our Name is our Promise". www.covenanthealth.net.
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Canada's Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 Origins to 1939: Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 1" (PDF). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
9. ^ a b c d "Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada" (PDF). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
10. ^ Barrera, Jorge (29 March 2018). "The horrors of St. Anne's". CBC News. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
11. ^ "Canada's Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern Experience: Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 2" (PDF). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 July 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
12. ^ McDermott, Vincent (3 March 2022). "Search for unmarked graves at residential school site in Fort Chipewyan beginning at the end of March". Fort McMurray Today. Archived from the original on 18 May 2023. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
13. ^ "Assiniboia Residential School Display Opens at Millennium Library". Manitoba Today. The Canadian Press. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
14. ^ a b "Canada's Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 1939 to 2000: Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 1" (PDF). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
15. ^ a b "The Survivors Speak: A Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada" (PDF). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
16. ^ "Canada's Residential Schools: Reconciliation: Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 6" (PDF). National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
17. ^ Barrera, Jorge (1 June 2018). "Some Catholic orders still withholding promised residential school records". CBC News. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
18. ^ Dangerfield, Katie (1 June 2021). "'Disgrace': Indigenous leaders blast Catholic Church for silence on residential schools". Global News. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
19. ^ "Our 'Colorful' Name | Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart". 4 September 2014.
20. ^ a b Hudson, Susan (13 September 2013). The Quiet Revolutionaries: How the Grey Nuns Changed the Social Welfare Paradigm of Lewiston, Maine. Routledge. ISBN 9781135519599 – via Google Books.
21. ^ a b "Grey Nuns", Canadian Encyclopedia Retrieved 26 August 2008.
22. ^ Gagnon, Claude-Marie. The Yellow House, Fides Publishers, 1990, p. 67-68
23. ^ Hudson, Susan (13 September 2013). The Quiet Revolutionaries: How the Grey Nuns Changed the Social Welfare Paradigm of Lewiston, Maine. Routledge. ISBN 9781135519599 – via Google Books.
24. ^ "Our History".
25. ^ "Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart - Who we are". Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart. 4 September 2014. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
26. ^ Grey Nuns ministries worldwide Archived 1 August 2012 at archive.today. Retrieved 26 August 2008.
27. ^ a b c Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart Ministries. Retrieved 26 August 2008. Archived 9 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
28. ^ Grey Nuns' Hospital. Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
29. ^ Mother House of the Grey Nuns of Montreal. Directory of Federal Heritage Designations. Parks Canada. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
30. ^ University of Calgary Library Special Collection article on Holy Cross School of Nursing. Retrieved 26 August 2008.
31. ^ Saskatoon Health Region article on St. Paul's Hospital. Retrieved 26 August 2008. Archived 2 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
32. ^ a b Alberta Heritage article on Grey Nuns. Retrieved 26 August 2008.
33. ^ Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart mission. Retrieved 26 August 2008. Archived 9 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
34. ^ Peretz, Ingrid (24 December 2008). "Montreal nuns moving – with saint's remains". The Globe and Mail. Canada. Retrieved 24 December 2008.
35. ^ Peacock, Tom (27 August 2014). "The fascinating history behind Concordia's new student residence". Concordia University News.
36. ^ CBC: Grey Nuns leave motherhouse for Concordia University takeover

## Further reading

[edit]

* The Grey Nuns and the Red River Settlement by Dennis King. Toronto: Book Society of Canada, 1980. ISBN 978-0-7725-5294-5
* Mother d'Youville, First Canadian Foundress by Albertine-Ferland Angers. Montreal: Sisters of Charity of Montreal, Grey Nuns, 2000. ISBN 2-920965-05-0

## External links

[edit]

* Grey Nuns of Montreal Home Page
* Sisters of Charity of Saint-Hyacinthe Home Page
* Sisters of Charity of Ottawa Home Page
* Sisters of Charity of Quebec Home Page
* Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart Home Page
* Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception Home Page
* Manitoba Historical Society – The Grey Nuns and the Red River Settlement
* Ward, Sister Mary Elizabeth. "Grey Nuns." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910

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