Published: May 20, 2011
“Floor-length 800-year-old-style habits”
‘Traditional’ order of women religious to teach at Marin Catholic High School
Four sisters from the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, will begin teaching this fall at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, the archdiocesan weekly Catholic San Francisco reports.
The sisters, “complete with their floor-length 800-year-old-style habits,” will teach mathematics, science, social studies and theology, the archdiocesan newspaper reported in its May 18 online edition.
“The sisters were invited to the archdiocese by Archbishop George Niederauer and Bishop-elect Thomas Daly, who was president of the archdiocesan Catholic high school until his election to bishop and appointment to the Diocese of San Jose as auxiliary bishop,” said the Catholic San Francisco report.
Marin Catholic president Tim Navone told the archdiocesan newspaper that, in addition to teaching, the sisters will help with student clubs, campus ministry and the retreat program.
“The sisters’ presence will reinforce the school’s emphasis on Catholic identity, which includes daily 7:30 a.m. Mass,” noted Catholic San Francisco.
Five sisters from the same order now administer and teach at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Sacramento. The order was invited there in the fall of 2010 by Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto.
The order was established on February 9, 1997, “when John Cardinal O’Connor of New York canonically established the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist as a community of religious women,” says the order’s homepage. Since then, the order has grown from four sisters to more than 100. The average age of a Dominican Sister of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist is 28, and the average age of women entering the order is 21, according to the website.
“In a world permeated by the culture of death, the Dominican Sisters of Mary seek to restore the dignity of the human person and work to build up a culture of life through how we live, what we teach, in participating in the annual March for Life in Washington D.C., the Walk for Life in San Francisco and pro-life events in other parts of the country, supporting and encouraging families and most especially through our daily fidelity to the consecrated life and our prayers,” says the order’s homepage.
Dominican Sister Mary Samuel Handwerker, paraphrased by Catholic San Francisco, said the order “is part of a worldwide resurgence among religious orders who embrace the traditional religious life as part of Blessed Pope John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization.”
The sisters are currently in the planning stages of construction of a $30-million priory on a 38-acre parcel of land in Loomis, which, when finished, could accommodate up to 100 sisters. ?
“With the extraordinary rate of vocations coming to the Dominican Sisters of Mary, the building of a new priory is a timely response and a tremendous opportunity to expand the teaching apostolate of the community,” says a statement on ‘Our California Expansion’ on the order’s website.
Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist also teach at schools in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, South Carolina and Texas.
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