After 169 years of continuous service to Catholics in central Ohio, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur no longer will be part of the Diocese of Columbus.
Sister Pat Pieper, SNDdeN, one of the two remaining members of the order living in the diocese, said she and Sister Annemary Miller, SNDdeN, who have shared a Columbus apartment since 2017, are moving to their congregation’s Mount Notre Dame community on Columbia Avenue in Cincinnati for what she described as “a combination of health issues and community needs. We each had different reasons for making the same decision,” she said.
Their departure ends a history that began in 1855, 13 years before the founding of the Diocese of Columbus, when the area covered by the diocese was part of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
“How grateful we Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are that we have been able to serve the people of the Diocese of Columbus through these many years,” said Sister Kathleen Harmon, provincial for the order’s Ohio province.
“The grace of sharing, of having brought the goodness of God has nourished our mission and given us great joy.”
The first members of the order to serve in Columbus – Sisters Mary Augusta Baustert, Kostka Deehan, Gonzaga Van Aschen and Mary Agnes Schumacker arrived in the city from Cincinnati on Aug. 27, 1855 in response to repeated requests from the pastors of the city’s original Catholic churches – St. Patrick and Holy Cross – for sisters to teach the children of their parishes.
They rented a small frame house on Washington Street that was furnished only with several chairs and a table. They had brought their own bedding from Cincinnati. Kind neighbors came to their aid with donations of additional furniture.
Within weeks of their arrival, the sisters began teaching at St. Patrick School. The addition of another sister for the next school year allowed them to open the school doors to children of Holy Cross. The order served both of those parishes for more than a century.
The sisters moved their living quarters twice in their first five years in the city. In 1860, with the assistance of several prominent citizens, they were able to purchase land at Rich and Grant streets a block from Holy Cross Church and build a two-story, 10-room convent, which was ready for occupation in December 1863.
In 1873, Bishop Sylvester Rosecrans asked the sisters to open a girls high school in Columbus because he said there was a need for one. The Dominican Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs had opened a similar school on land that now is part of Ohio Dominican University, but in those days that was considered too far out of town for many people.
The Notre Dame sisters bought property adjacent to their convent and built Columbus St. Joseph Academy there, with classes opening on Sept. 6, 1875. The sisters will commemorate the 150th anniversary of that event next year.
The school originally charged tuition of $8 per quarter for higher grades and $7 for lower grades. Sister Josephine Ignatius Tierney was appointed principal and her kind, scholarly presence would guide the academy for the next quarter-century.
A new academy building was added in 1924 and eventually the sisters’ convent, a new convent built in 1962, a chapel and the academy occupied the area from Rich to Main streets and from Sixth to Grant (formerly Seventh) streets.
The academy remained open until 1977, when the building was sold to Franklin University. The sisters sold the rest of the Rich Street complex to the university at the end of 1991 and the area continues to be used for educational purposes. Some of the buildings used by the sisters were torn down, but the 1924 school and one other building from the sisters’ time there remain standing.
Sister Pat (1954) and Sister Annemary (1978) are among 10 living Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who are graduates of the academy. The others, with their year of graduation, are Sisters Rose Zuber (1946); Rose Marie Deibel (1947}; Bernice Weilbacher (1951); Camilla Burns (1954); Carolyn Davis (1954); Rebecca Spires (1958); Stephanie Thompson (1973) and Anne Ralston (1980). The school continues to have an active alumni association, led by Sister Pat.
Other schools served by the order include St. Joseph Cathedral, St. Aloysius, St. Augustine, St. Christopher, St. Agnes and St. Joseph Academy in Columbus, Logan St. John, Lancaster St. Mark and Westerville St. Paul the Apostle. The sisters left most of those schools in the mid-1970s and remained at St. Augustine and St. John until 1990.
Sisters from the order were the administrators of Columbus Bishop Hartley High School when it opened in 1957 and remained there until 1984. A convent also was established at Hartley, with the sisters who were stationed there living in the downtown convent until their quarters were ready.
In 1942, the sisters opened a center known as Maryhurst in Marble Cliff for young women discerning the religious life who would attend St. Joseph Academy, then after graduation would continue the discernment process in Cincinnati as postulants if that was their choice. It remained open until 1956. The order also provided staff members for the former Diocesan Child Guidance Center in downtown Columbus from 1953 to 1983.
Both of the Notre Dame sisters leaving Columbus served in a variety of positions in the city and elsewhere in the post-Vatican II era when most orders of sisters transitioned from primarily teaching to performing other ministries.
Sister Pat, a sister for 70 years, was a pastoral associate at Holy Cross Church and a volunteer at the Open Shelter in two separate periods. Sister Annemary, a member of the order for 45 years, was a nurse for the Columbus Department of Health and LifeCare Alliance in Columbus, then answered phones at the Joint Organization for Inner-City Needs. Both also were pastoral associates at Columbus St. Margaret of Cortona Church.
Both also served as missionaries – Sister Pat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sister Annemary on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.
“My most memorable experiences as a sister came during the seven years when I served in the Congo,” Sister Pat said. “This was just after that nation had gained independence from Belgium in 1960. Everything was so different and unexpected from what I was used to, but it was something I very much wanted to do because I wanted the experience and to be able to put to use all the French I had learned at St. Joseph Academy.
“My longest time in any one place before coming to Columbus for a second time in 2013 was in Arizona, where I spent nine years living in the Phoenix area and was a chaplain at Arizona State Hospital. As it was when working in Africa, this extended period gave me time to get to really know people and not just learn about them.”
Sister Pat also spent a year as a pastoral minister at the order’s Motherhouse in Namur, Belgium and another year at Cuvilly, France, where St. Julie Billiart, who with Francoise Blin de Bordon cofounded the order in 1804, was born.
“Leaving Columbus for Cincinnati is part of how life happens for us as sisters,” she said. “I have a large family of nieces, nephews and associates of the order here, so I’ll still have plenty of ties to Columbus.
“Since becoming a sister, Mount Notre Dame has always been home to me. A lot of sisters I’ve known are there, so going back there is a coming home, but leaving Columbus is a bittersweet departure. It’s nice to know I’m going to a place where there will be help when I need it, and I’m sure I’ll find new ways to volunteer and do community service.”
Sister Annemary, who grew up as a member of Columbus Corpus Christi Church, spent most of her career in Arizona and the Columbus and Cincinnati areas as a nurse.
“I just loved everything about nursing,” she said. “It gave me the opportunity to provide healing to people of all types. I especially enjoyed working with poor people and other sisters. From the time I was a child, I always wanted to serve God through individuals and families and nursing gave me that opportunity.”
Speaking of retirement, she said, “Eventually, there comes a time when you just have to do it. You just get the call and you go. This just seemed like the right time to follow that call as I followed the call to be a sister.”