Holy Cross sisters played a significant role in the development of the Catholic Church in Utah

Friday, Nov. 07, 2014

A famous proverb has it that history does not disclose its alternatives, meaning that we can never know the course history might have followed if a certain event had or had not occurred.  Thus we cannot know what the history of the Diocese of Salt Lake City might have been if the Holy Cross Sisters had declined to minister here. It is a reasonable speculation, though, that it would have been very different, for the 1,374 sisters who have served here since 1875 have been involved in a great many different programs, some of which have been among the most ambitious ones.

Catholic ministries in Utah have always faced daunting problems, mostly as a result of the vast size of the diocese and the scattered population of Utah Catholics. When Father Lawrence Scanlan (later the first Bishop of Salt Lake) arrived in 1873, he was responsible for a vast region that included not only the entire territory of Utah, but the seven eastern counties of Nevada as well. Obviously most of the handful of Catholics in that region could not have expected a very close degree of pastoral care, but Bishop Scanlan could not simply ignore them either, especially because developments in railroading, mining and livestock grazing were beginning to add dramatically to the Catholic population. Clearly, he needed help.

Although a few other priests began to trickle in, most clergy seem to have perceived correctly that Utah was pretty rough duty and stayed away. Much more productive was Bishop Scanlan’s inspired decision to appeal to Father Edward Sorin, CSC, founder of Notre Dame University and Director General of the American Sisters of the Holy Cross for sisters to minister in Utah. More than any priests or other religious orders, the Holy Cross sisters bore the brunt of Catholic ministries in frontier Utah, and even today they are vital to various diocesan ministries.

The Holy Cross order, which includes priests, brothers and sisters, was founded by Rev. Basil Moreau in Le Mans, France in 1841. Moreau was a progressive educator whose vision was a teaching order that would make education democratically available to all social classes and whose curriculum would include, in addition to the Classical courses, training in music, art and physical activity. Eventually members of the order came to the United States, establishing what became Notre Dame University in Indiana and St. Mary’s Academy in Betrand, Mich. By the time Bishop Scanlan sent out his call for help, the reputation of the Holy Cross order as teachers and school administrators was well known. Utah, where education was being carried out largely in Mormon ward schools and a few Protestant academies, would have seemed to the Holy Cross sisters a field ripe for the harvest.

The first two sisters, who arrived in 1875, were a distinguished pair. Mother Augusta Anderson would remain in Utah only three years, but she went on to become Mother General of the order. Sister Raymond Sullivan took to the ministry here wholeheartedly and spent the next 17 years of her life in Utah. Their first two foundations were long-lasting as well: St. Mary’s Academy for girls, which was located downtown where the Salt Palace was eventually erected, and Holy Cross Hospital.

Running a hospital might have seemed a strange enterprise for members of a teaching order, but Holy Cross sisters had gained a certain amount of nursing experience during the American Civil War. St. Mary’s Academy was an impressive multistory brick structure with an academic reputation that attracted non-Catholic students as well as Catholic. Eventually it outgrew its physical plant, and the sisters purchased land on Salt Lake City’s east bench near Thirteenth South, where they erected the truly monumental St. Mary of the Wasatch, which included even a collegiate program.  

Holy Cross Hospital was a corresponding success that expanded to include a large nursing school and played a vital role in health care in Salt Lake City until it was sold in the 1990s.

(Editor’s note: This article on the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Utah will be continued in next month’s From the Archives.)