Mother Emilie Kemen, German born, was the American foundress of the Sisters of St. Mary, which not long after found its way to Fort Worth.
All around Sister Rita Claire Davis, in a small office at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Fort Worth, sit the books and manuals, and gobs of homework — her own and that of students — all on the topic of English as a second language.
Sister Rita Claire has a thriving class of about 170 students from the predominantly Hispanic parish in the city’s southeast quadrant, off West Seminary and not far from La Gran Plaza, the former Seminary South mall.
Her students are all first-generation immigrants, mostly from Mexico, but some from the regions beyond that country’s own southern border.
She was said to have “single-handedly” started the program before COVID and rebuilt it afterward with a cadre of faithful volunteers.
She has been teaching ESL programs since 1986, beginning in West Texas. It was there that she was helping migrant oil field workers fill out immigration applications and papers and all the rest of the bureaucracy’s paper trail.
“A few of them asked if I could help with English,” she says. “I’ve been teaching it ever since.”
Sister Rita Claire is 94 years old.
“You can’t keep her down,” says Sister Patricia Ridgley, regional leader of the Sisters of Saint Mary of Namur’s Western Region. “That’s her heart.”
Sister Rita Claire could be the face of the mission of the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, a congregation of Catholic nuns devoted to the education and care of the poor and vulnerable, as well as various social and pastoral ministries.
As their mission statement puts it, they are committed to “spreading the Good News wherever the Spirit leads us in meeting the needs of God’s people on earth.”
Last month, the sisters celebrated the congregation’s 150th anniversary in Texas. Of those, 138 years have been in Fort Worth. The grand structure of Our Lady of Victory, an all-girls Catholic school opened in 1910, stands as a monument to all their impactful, life-altering work and all the lives impacted.
The number is quite literally countless, as in addition to OLV, the sisters staffed many of the schools within the Diocese of Fort Worth.
As it concerns the social commentary on the matter of “strong women” in society, I highly recommend a visit to the sisters, whose lives are a rich tapestry of service to others and simplicity. An uncommon strength will be immediately apparent.
An encounter with a sister of the Sisters of St. Mary is impactful. They are, to a person, joyful and confident, full of hope and encouragement. They are warm and truly empathetic. They are motivators. They inspire to lives of authentic self and true potential as those made in the image of God.
They are daring and fearless. They are audacious in the use of their time and talents, and it is for one purpose. What needs to be done to make lives better, they roll up their sleeves and get done.
One need not look any further than the living example of Sister Rita Claire and her English-as-a-second-language students. She and all the rest are grounded in 200 years of history.
PDC D+ Team
AR416 Box 9
The sisters came to Texas in 1873 to do “a little good,” as Mother Emilie, the foundress of the sisters in America, said of the three sisters who climbed the banks of the Brazos for an arrival in Waco in 1873. They had been requested to establish schools on the frontier. They were badly needed. Children of only the wealthiest families were literate. Many were roaming the streets. Former slaves had received no preparation for living independently, and they were restless, some violent.
The sisters were greeted with the harshest of conditions on the Texas frontier in 1873, including the threat of raids by bands of Native Americans, disease, and, of course, the heat that we’re all so accustomed to. It was also Protestant country, and many had unhappy memories of Catholics during the reign of Spain and Mexico.
Moreover, the Ku Klux Klan had a vibrant presence, which died down only to reemerge in the 1900s. My own family was impacted. My paternal great-grandparents — two families, Henry and Whitfill — operated adjacent farms in Crowley. They were the only two Catholic families in Crowley. Because of KKK harassment — Catholics and Blacks were favorite targets — the youngest girls of both families were sent to school at OLV. One of those was a great-aunt, Sister Benedictine Henry, for 69 years a faithful servant to the mission of the Sisters of St. Mary.
Recess was a time to learn, too. That’s Sr. John Mary Beard and Sr. Mary Jane Jerome.
But the sisters persisted, their faith doing more to drive them than any energy drink could ever dream. Only a week after arriving in Waco, they opened their first Texas academy, Sacred Heart.
The sisters preferred the city of Waco because of the railroads that had been established north. And that’s the way they went, following the railroads and setting up academies, including St. Ignatius Academy, the forerunner to Fort Worth’s OLV, in 1886. The building still stands, just to the south of and mere feet from St. Patrick Cathedral.
Ultimately, in addition to Waco and Fort Worth, academies were built in Ennis, Corsicana, Denison, Sherman, Dallas, and Wichita Falls. In time, they formed the University of Dallas in Irving.
The seeds of all the little good the sisters have done here and across the world were planted by two women. “It’s amazing how it has spread,” Ridgley says.
The congregation of the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur was formed in Namur, Belgium, in 1819 in the wake of the French Revolution. It was a time when religious communities were forbidden throughout Belgium and France.
Josephine Sana and Elizabeth Berger wanted to do a little good, asking their pastor, Father Nicholas Joseph Minsart, if they could offer sewing lessons to the girls in the area. The skill would allow the girls to make an honest living rather than have to resort to prostitution. The two were asked later if they could include religious instruction in the curriculum.
That was the first of many girls’ academies set up all over the world and the tradition of Catholic education that marks the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur.
The sisters came to the U.S. in the depths of the American Civil War. They settled in Lockport, New York, where they established a school for immigrant children.
The welcoming party for the sisters in Fort Worth included prominent businessman John B. Laneri, the founder of O.B. Macaroni. Laneri was a benefactor of the Catholic Church community in Fort Worth. He was a founder of St. Mary’s Catholic Church on the Near Southside and was largely responsible for the construction of the church that stands on Magnolia Avenue, built in 1924.
Laneri was also a chief advocate for Catholic education. After the sisters had already established a foothold in Fort Worth, he formed Laneri College, a Catholic high school for boys, in 1921. OLV and Laneri later merged in 1960 to become the coed Nolan Catholic High School. The building that housed Laneri on Hemphill Street is now Cassata Catholic High School.
Laneri had taken on the care of his orphaned niece in the early 1900s. An immigrant from Italy, she arrived here from Manhattan at age 18. He counted on the sisters to help in her pastoral care, says Elizabeth Martin, the granddaughter of Emilia “Mildred” Laneri Haire — Laneri’s niece.
“He had no children,” Martin says, “and, so, with the women in his family, he felt very strongly about their need for education and independence. That created a very deep relationship early on with the sisters.”
The first graduating class at OLV, June 8, 1911.
A tradition had been put in place. Martin’s mother, her aunt, and an uncle were all educated by the Sisters of St. Mary, as were Martin and her two sisters, all graduates of Nolan Catholic.
At a reception to mark the sisters’ 150th anniversary in Texas at Nolan on Nov. 12, many of their former students were there, including one who was a grade school pupil of Sister Rita Claire almost 70 years ago.
They were there to express gratitude for the influence and impact the sisters had on them. It is difficult for many to imagine a life well lived without them.
The reception was a gathering “to thank God for all his goodness,” says Sister Immaculée Mukabugabo, the congregation’s general superior, based in Belgium. “What He’s permitted the sisters to do in teaching. And many of the sisters here have gone to other countries as missionaries.”
Those other countries include Rwanda, where Sister Roberta Hesse volunteered to go during the lowest moments of that war-torn country, including the genocide in the 1990s.
“I think their education, their love, their example of integrity and empathy, compassion and joy are the very structure that holds me up,” says Martin, an attorney and founding partner of Change Agents. “It holds me up in my work. It holds me up in my personal life. I can’t imagine what my view of the world would be without the lens that they helped craft for me.”
Today, there are 21 sisters, including Sister Rita Claire, who live in Fort Worth. The number is dwindling. They live in a convent adjacent to the OLV building. Diminished enrollment over the years at OLV elementary school caused its closure in 2021, marking an end of the school after 111 years. (That building was constructed in the 1950s.) The teachers there were mostly, if not all, lay people.
Worldwide, there are 355 sisters in the congregation, which is actually witnessing some growth on the African continent. In Rwanda, Cameroon, and Tanzania, 160 are in formation and postulants.
In the U.S., there are fewer and fewer women taking on a Catholic vocation. It’s the tenor of American society in the 21st century. Girls, and boys, of course, are choosing to do different things for a variety of reasons.
“We have sisters even now who taught first graders who are now graying people come to talk to them or come to thank them for doing this little thing that helped them,” said Sister Patricia Ridgley, the regional leader of the sisters’ Western Region. “I mean, those stories are numerous little bitty things that, you know, somebody will say, ‘I lost my mother and I was so lost and you took time’ and stories like that, and they just constantly are coming.
“Whatever God is doing for us as a congregation or for vocations, we’re just thankful that we have been able to do a little good and it’s in God’s hands.”
