School Sisters of Notre Dame - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

School Sisters of Notre Dame is a worldwide order of Roman Catholic nuns devoted to primary

Primary education

A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...

, secondary

Secondary education

Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...

, and post-secondary education. Their life in mission centers on prayer, community life and ministry. The sisters uphold their congregation's founding vision that education has the power to transform the world, and they do so in a variety of ways, serving as teachers, administrators, lawyers, accountants, nurses, therapists, social workers, pastoral ministers, social justice advocates and much more.

Founding and growth

The order was founded in Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

in 1833 during a time of poverty and illiteracy. Its founder, Caroline Gerhardinger, known by the religious name of Mary Theresa of Jesus, formed a community with two other women in Neunburg vorm Wald

Schwandorf (district)

Schwandorf is a Kreis in the east part of Bavaria, Germany. Neighboring districts are Cham, Regensburg, Neumarkt, Amberg-Sulzbach, Neustadt , and the Czech Plzeň Region.-History:...

to teach the poor.

In 1847, Blessed Theresa and five companion sisters traveled to the United States to aid German immigrants, especially girls and women. That same year, the sisters staffed schools in three German parishes in Baltimore, Maryland: St. James, St. Michael, and St. Alphonsus, as well as opening the Institute of Notre Dame

Institute of Notre Dame

The Institute of Notre Dame is a private Catholic all-girls high school located in Baltimore, Maryland. It is located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.-History:...

, a private school for German girls. Eventually the Congregation spread across the United States and into Canada, ultimately forming 8 North American Provinces.

More than 3,500 School Sisters of Notre Dame work in thirty-six countries in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

and Oceania

Oceania

Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

Governance

The original rule of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, approved by Pope Pius IX

Pope Pius IX

Blessed Pope Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal...

in 1865, allowed Blessed Theresa and her successors, instead of local bishops, to govern the order. The main motherhouse was moved from Neunburg vorm Wald to Munich in 1843 and remained there until the 1950s. Today, the Generalate of the Congregation can be found in Rome, Italy.

Nun Study

678 members of the order in the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

are participating in the Nun Study

Nun Study

The Nun Study of Aging and Alzheimer's Disease is a still-running longitudinal study, begun in 1986, to examine the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. David Snowdon, the founding Nun Study investigator, originally began his research at the University of Minnesota, but moved it to the University of...

, a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...

initiated in 1986. The homogeneous life style of the nuns makes them an ideal study population. Convent archives have been made available to investigators as a resource on the history of participants. Of the 677 nuns which include Sister Kathleen Treanor, 93 and Sister Antoine Daniel, 96, only 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last rounds of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study

Nun Study

. The nuns decided to donate their brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

s to science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

. They acknowledged the success to Dr. David Snowdon

David Snowdon

David A. Snowdon is an epidemiologist and professor of neurology at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include antioxidants and aging, and the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease, especially predictive factors in early life and the role of...

, epidemiology professor of University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

in 1986. In 1992, he administered annual memory and cognitive tests to 678 nuns ranging in age from 75 to 102.

External links

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Founding and growth

Governance

Nun Study

See also

External links