Publications & Announcements
Betty Ann McNeil, DC, has published Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to Civil War Nursing, based on her discovery of 500 pages of hand-written memoirs from the Civil War era. McNeil transcribed, edited, and annotated these texts, and the volume includes these texts along with correspondence and a record of sisters’ services in military hospitals. The volume can be ordered directly from the Seton Heritage shop online (https://setonshrine.org/product/balm-of-hope/) or by contacting giftshopmanager@setonheritage.org.
Sister Jeanette Fettig, CSC, reports that a new documentary featuring the Congregations of Holy Cross, “Legends of Michiana: Congregations of Holy Cross: Sacred Mission—Civic Duty,” aired in September on WNIT, the PBS station for Northwest Indiana and Southwest Michigan. Researchers for the project visited the archives of Sisters of the Holy Cross, Archives of the Midwest Province of Brothers Congregation of Holy Cross and the archives of the Congregation of the Holy Cross (priests) at the University of Notre Dame. An ebook titled Willing Hearts, about the Holy Cross Sisters’ work as nurses during the Civil War, is in the works, as well.
Mary Ryllis Clark, Heather O’Connor, and Valerie Krips have edited a volume of oral histories of the post-Vatican II years from Australian sisters, published as Perfect Charity: Women Religious Living the Spirit of Vatican II (Cascade Books, 2015).
Mercy Heritage Center (MHC), which holds the archives of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, has officially made its collections list and select finding aids available online for public access. MHC has 34 collections from former communities, regional communities, and congregation-wide associations across the country. “Our collections document ministries like schools, hospitals, and other programs,” writes Emily Reed, digital records archivist at MHC. “They also document the histories of individual sisters and the story of the community itself. More finding aids are continuously being added. Inquiries welcome!” Visit www.sistersofmercy.org/about-us/mercy-heritage-center for more information. Finding aids are under the “Our Collections” section.
Colleen McFarland Rademaker, MA, MLIS, became head archivist for the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (Kansas) in May 2015. She succeeds Barbara Sellers, SCL, who served as archivist from 2003 to 2014.
Mary Navarre, OP, has edited a volume of oral histories and essays on the experience of one group of sisters in the post-Vatican II years: Tapestry in Time: The Story of the Dominican Sisters, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1966-2012 (Eerdmans, 2015).
Sister Louise Smith writes from the archives for the Western Province of the Sisters of St. Mary in Fort Worth, Texas. The community’s new website is now online at www.ssmnwestern.com.
Stephanie Morris, director of archives for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, writes that the archives’ new email address is sbs.archives@gmail.com. Their website is katharinedrexel.org.