Sisters of the Divine Compassion

The Sisters of the Divine Compassion are a Roman Catholic religious institute founded in New York City in 1886 by Mother Mary Veronica – formerly Mary Dannat Starr – Msgr. Thomas Preston and a group of young women moved by the "Compassion of God" in their lives and a desire to bring that compassion to New York City’s destitute children in real and tangible ways.

History

Mary Caroline Dannat Starr

Mary Caroline Dannat Starr came from a wealthy New York family. She was born in New York City on April 27, 1838, the oldest of six children born to William Henry and Susannah Jones Dannat. Susanna Dannat was the daughter of Daniel Jones, a Welsh immigrant who became a wealthy merchant and amassed a fortune in brewing and real estate. William Dannat came from a prosperous Episcopal family involved in the lumber business in the New York area in the firm Dannat Pell.[1]

Her family had occasionally attended the neighborhood Baptist church. In 1857, at the age of nineteen, she married Walter Smith Starr. They moved to Brooklyn where she briefly attended a Congregationalist church. The marriage produced two sons, Chandler Dannat (b. Sept.3, 1858) and Walter Dannat (b. March 11, 1860).[1] While her mother joined an Episcopal congregation, her father had by then gravitated towards the tenets of the Swedenborgian Church, and Mary Caroline did the same.[2]

Association of the Holy Family

Still dissatisfied, she began to look into Catholicism and started taking instruction from Father Thomas Preston, parish priest of St. Ann's on the East Side. Mrs. Starr was received into the Catholic Church in April 1868. Shortly after that, the now Widow Starr founded, with Father Preston's assistance, the Association of the Holy Family, with a house at 316 W14th. That autumn she and some associates opened a sewing school for girls in St. Bernard's parish, whose congregation was mostly Irish immigrants and their descendants. The school also provided the children with lunch, and by Christmas 250 students were enrolled.[2]

After a while, the group changed its name to the Association for Befriending Children and Young Girls to better indicate its aims and mission. The group extended their activities to provide shelter, training and religious education to girls left to fend for themselves or sent by their families into the street to beg. Most importantly, the women provided safety, love and hope.[2] In 1870 they established the House of the Holy Family at 134-136 Second Avenue in Manhattan, accepting girls between the ages of 10 and 21 years. There were 102 girls cared for in 1900. Census records for 1910 show fifty-eight "dependent women and delinquent and unprotected girls" in residence. "Colored people" were not received.[3]

Institute of the Divine Compassion

Seeing the necessity of a religious community which should be trained to this work and perpetuate it, Father Preston compiled a rule of life for those who desired to devote their lives to it. The first draft was written 5 September 1873, and was observed in its elemental form until 1886, when it was elaborated and obtained the informal approbation of the Archbishop of New York.[4] Starr became Mother Mary Veronica. By the 1890s, the Sisters were also in charge of the Association for Befriending Children and Young Girls at the Second Avenue address and the House of Our Lady for Business Girls at 52-54 East 126th Street in Manhattan.

By the late 1890s, the Congregation and its ministry to children and young women were flourishing. At the same time, the area around Second Avenue was becoming increasingly commercialized and less conducive to their work. With the advent of commuter rail travel and widespread use of the telephone, the "country" was becoming the "suburbs", and Mother Veronica decided on the expansive Tilford estate in White Plains, New York, in Westchester County, for a novitiate and relocation of the ministry. Dannat and Preston named it Good Counsel Farm and created the Vacation House for Working Girls there. From 1894 to 1925, the historic home Mapleton housed the convent.[5]

In 1892 they opened the House of Nazareth in White Plains and relocated children from New York City. The chapel was erected on the site of the Prudhomme house that became the first convent for the Sisters in White Plains. To make room for the chapel, the house was moved to the back of the property and later became Our Lady of Good Counsel Academy Elementary School. In 1901 Good Counsel Training School was begun, and in 1918 a high school, the Academy of Our Lady of Good Counsel, was added to the eight year elementary school.

In the 1920s the Sisters of the Divine Compassion were invited to staff seven parish schools and at the same time were developing a women’s college, Good Counsel College. In 1947 the congregation opened a second high school, Preston High School, in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx, and served as educators in over 25 parishes in Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester, and Putnam counties. In 1972, Good Counsel College became the College of White Plains, which was merged with Pace University in 1976.[6]

In January 2015 it was reported that the Good Counsel Academy Elementary school, which currently enrolls students from Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth grade, will be re-locating to a new site at the former Holy Name of Jesus School in Valhalla, New York. Because the Sisters of the Divine Compassion are selling the 16 acre campus, Good Counsel Academy Elementary will open in Valhalla in September.[7] The Good Counsel Complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.[8]

In February 2015 the Sisters announced that the Academy of Our Lady of Good Counsel will close in July 2015. The community's leadership team reported that, "[m]ultiple properties were investigated and eliminated as possible sites for relocation during this past year."[9]

Ministry

The Sisters of the Divine Compassion today are a religious community of vowed members, lay associates and partners committed "to proclaim and witness by our lives and service the Compassionate Presence of God in our world." As of 2015 the Sisters of the Divine Compassion number about 80 women serving in 38 ministries. These include education, health care, pastoral ministry, and the Divine Compassion Spirituality Center.

Mother Susan M. Merritt, PhD, Dean Emerita of the Seidenberg School at Pace University completed her term as President: 2008-2012. Mother Merritt celebrated the 125th Anniversary of the Sisters. she was succeeded by Sr. Carol Wagner.

References

  1. 1 2 Casey, Pat. "Mary Caroline Dannat Starr, an Icon of Religious and Local History", The White Plains Examiner, July 15, 2014
  2. 1 2 3 Heuser, Herman Joseph. Mother Mary Veronica, Foundress of the Sisterhood of the Divine Compassion, P. J. Kenedy, 1915
  3. ↑ Hill, Joseph Adna, Bliss, Edwin M. and Koren, John. "Benevolent institutions", United States. Bureau of the Census, Govt. print. off., 1911
  4. ↑ Clair, Mother. "Institute of the Divine Compassion." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 24 April 2015
  5. ↑ Larry E. Gobrecht (March 1976). "National Register of Historic Places Registration:Mapleton". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2010-12-24.
  6. ↑ John A. Bonafide (October 1996). "National Register of Historic Places Registration:Good Counsel Complex". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2010-12-24.
  7. ↑ "Good Counsel Academy Elementary to Relocate", Thompson-Bender
  8. ↑ Staff (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  9. ↑ "RDC Leadership Message to the Good Counsel Academy HS Community"

Further reading

External links

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