Seeking Home: Commemorating 200 years at Loretto Motherhouse

In the beginning …

This story is about an unusual group of women, daughters of Maryland settlers. They were young women who came together on the Kentucky frontier in the area some call the Kentucky Holy Land because of the sizable Catholic population who arrived in the late 18th century from Maryland ­— frontierspeople seeking fresh, unplowed lands where they could live and worship together. These women committed to teaching pioneer children and to living simple religious lives.

The sisters bought land in what then was southern Washington County, near St. Charles Church — they paid for that land with cash gained from selling a man named Tom.

Later they bought more land nearby. They called their log cabin compound Little Loretto; their neighbors called them the Sisters of Loretto.

Upheaval…

In 1824 a group of priests wanted to use the sisters’ land, and the bishop agreed. The bishop told the sisters to take their school equipment and students, all the garden and household items, and move to a place called St. Stephen’s Farm — which Father Stephen Badin had abandoned six years before.

The sisters borrowed wagons and packed up everything. The last thing they packed was the Blessed Sacrament. They made a place on one of the wagons and had the students walk alongside as an honor guard. It was 9 miles to St. Stephen’s Farm; it took most of one day to walk over the rough road. Some neighbors walked with them. It was late November 1824 — cold and cloudy like November days are in Kentucky.

The sisters gradually settled into the few neglected buildings Badin had left behind. It was a cold winter as they worked together making a new school and living space that they called Loretto Motherhouse because it would be the homeplace for all the sisters. The Motherhouse is in the same place today, 200 years later, and sisters still live there.

The sisters called themselves the Friends of Mary Beneath the Cross of Jesus to help themselves remember the many sorrows of Mary. When they had to pack everything and leave their home, they remembered when Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt to save Jesus from King Herod. The sisters felt like they were refugees the same as Jesus, Mary and Joseph. They were carrying the body of Jesus too. Maybe they also thought of all the people in the world who were refugees. Maybe they thought of the Cherokee Indians, who even then had begun pounding out a Trail of Tears across Kentucky.

The Kentucky settlers and the Indigenous peoples they displaced have a common story — they were almost all refugees, which means for one reason or another they need-ed to leave where they were living because times were hard. The native peoples had to flee or be killed by the settlers. The settlers had to move because they needed fertile land for their families. All of these refugee peoples took everything they had from their homes and walked to Kentucky or away from it to seek new land where they could make a safe and healthy living. Even when they settled, they sometimes had to move more than once to find the right place for their families. Loretto’s story is one very small part of the refugee story.

Coming Home

By Mary Ann McGivern SL

We Loretto sisters have lived at the Motherhouse for 200 years this November. We commemorated the sad march at the end of June. About 100 sisters, individuals and families, including six confirmation students, traveled by wagon and car from the first Loretto site near St. Charles along the 9 miles of road to the Loretto Motherhouse.

At St. Charles Church, Eleanor Craig SL spoke of today’s refugees: victims of war and drug cartels and political violence and destruction caused by climate change. She gave the confirmation students a bread basket containing the Eucharist — bread for the journey, bread to give us strength, bread that is with us every day.

The students carried the Eucharist on the wagon, and we held a Benediction at the Motherhouse when we got there in the early evening: a thanksgiving for the arrival of the sisters 200 years ago, tinged with a sense of the hardship the sisters faced and the sorrow of the loss of their first home.

Perhaps in November we will celebrate the joy and vigor of our 200 years here, upon this hill.

Upon This Hill: Excerpt from a poem by Cecily Jones SL

No eager journey this autumn of our grief
but, new, the priest had ordered we should move,
our place a trade for this. I looked to Ann
and Mary (Christina had passed on). Obey,
a cloud of sorrow in their eyes, a shoulder’s
stoic shrug. I knew the flames that had consumed
our Father’s scripts still burned their hearts (and mine
as well), but Be obedient and faithful,
his words from Belgium four years ago, now seared
again our shattered souls. And we said yes
to Loretto’s dark uprooting to this hill.

You can read Sister Cecily’s poem about Loretto’s move in 1824 in its entirety here.

To read all of the articles in the fall 2024 issue, click here.