From health care to helping immigrants, Daughters of Charity serve needs where they find them

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Sister Mary Walz is the Visitatrix of the Daughters of Charity West Central (St. Louis) Province. The Daughters' provincialate is located in the Central West End. There are nearly 70 Daughters who live in the St. Louis area.

Sister Rosa Lee Kramer remembers it well. It was career day at her Catholic high school in Seneca, Kan., and in walks a Daughter of Charity, her bright white, crisply starched cornette gleaming.

"It was quite shocking for our parish," said Sister Rosa Lee, who added that Seneca at that time was Benedictine territory.

But through that striking introduction, the woman religious became interested in the community, co-founded by St. Louise de Marillac and St. Vincent de Paul in 1633. Sister Rosa Lee entered the Daughters of Charity in 1961.

"I gradually became attracted to the way in which they served," she said. "It wasn't just education. It was a much broader view of service."

An elementary school teacher and librarian for more than 40 years, particularly in the areas of reading, English and religion, in Missouri, Texas and Louisiana, Sister Rosa Lee today serves as the assistant archivist for the Daughters of Charity's West Central (St. Louis) Province, its offices located in the Central West End.

Considered a Society of Apostolic Life, the community's primary goal is to serve the poor and marginalized, especially in areas of education, health care and social work. The St. Louis Province, which includes Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, has about 160 Daughters. There are 68 in St. Louis, according to Sister Mary Walz, Visitatrix for the province.

St. Vincent de Paul has said the Daughters' main role is to "honor our Lord Jesus Christ as the source and model of all charity, serving Him corporally and spiritually in the person of the poor."

Sister Rosa Lee worked for four years in Rio Grande City, a small Texas town that sits on the border with Mexico. There, she worked with students to improve their reading scores.

"I guarantee you, that stretched me beyond anything I had ever experienced," she said. "But I didn't do any of that by myself. It's always in collaboration."

Working with historical artifacts and information that tell the story of the Daughters of Charity, Sister Rosa Lee explained, "it's a great history, if it's done in the attitudes of Vincent and Louise. It's not a history or a service that is done with the drums beating and the trumpets blaring. It's done in the nitty-gritty of people serving people and working with them in an unassuming way -- and believing that each step of that way is the walk of providence."

When the Daughters came to St. Louis in 1828, they began their ministry at Mullanphy Hospital at the request of Bishop Joseph Rosati and others in the community.

"That response to that request led to other requests," said Sister Walz, an Iowa native who entered the community in 1965. In St. Louis, the Daughters started Guardian Angel Settlement as an orphanage for young immigrant girls. They also minister with agencies and organizations such as Our Little Haven, Child Center-Marygrove, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the English Tutoring Project.

In all of these ministries, "their primary focus is working with persons living in poverty," she said. "Many of them are immigrants, others are children with a variety of difficulties in their families. There is no need that really is foreign to the Daughters of Charity."