New York Sisters of Charity won’t take new members, signaling end of congregation

Denver, Colo., Apr 28, 2023 / 15:10 pm (CNA).

The Sisters of Charity of New York, founded in 1846, announced that they will no longer take new members, describing their congregation as on “a path to completion.”

“The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul of New York will no longer work toward finding nor accepting new members to our congregation in the United States,” the congregation said in an April 27 statement.

In a unanimous vote at their 2023 general assembly, the sisters decided to adopt the recommendations of the congregation’s executive council.

The delegates approved the recommendation to affirm that the New York sisters “continue to live our mission to the fullest, while acknowledging that we are on a path to completion.”

“The decision was not an easy one,” said the congregation, which has 154 sisters. “We will continue to grow in love. We will continue to deepen our relationships with each other, with our associates and with our ministry partners. We will continue to deepen our relationship with our God.”

The Sisters of Charity Federation of North America has 14 member congregations, including the New York body. The federation website gives inconsistent membership figures, reporting that there are 1,871 to 2,500 sisters among its member congregations. CNA sought clarification from the federation but did not receive a response by publication.

The New York sisters said they still believe in “the future of religious life.” The sisters will continue to promote vocations and refer any inquiries to Sisters of Charity federation congregations and the Religious Formation Conference, a Chicago-based national organization that supports Catholic religious life.

The congregation’s statement, citing its 200-year-old history, said New York’s Sisters of Charity will “continue to pass the torch of charity.”

“This is not the end of our ministries. Our mission will continue beyond our sisters, through our associates and partners in ministry, expanding what it means to live the charism of charity into the future,” the congregation said.

Their history dates back to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a native New Yorker who founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1809. Seton sent three Sisters of Charity to New York City in 1817 to help care for orphans. The New York congregation was founded as an independent community in 1846.

In their time in New York, the Sisters of Charity have opened or staffed 185 schools, 28 hospitals, 23 child care institutions, and other ministries to serve those in need, according to their website.

The New York congregation currently sponsors the College of Mount St. Vincent, a Catholic liberal arts college in New York City with 1,800 undergraduate and graduate students.

It also supports the Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corporation, which provides affordable housing for senior citizens, homeless women and children, formerly homeless families, and adults with disabilities.

The Sisters of Charity has sponsored a mission to Guatemala, where sisters prepare lay catechists and eucharistic ministers and help survivors and victims of the country’s decades-long civil war, which concluded in 1996. According to the congregation’s website, in 2017 Sister Rosenda Magdalena Castañeda Gonzalez became the first Guatemalan woman to profess final vows as a Sisters of Charity of New York.

The Sisters of Charity Ministry Network, launched in 2015, oversees the New York Foundling Hospital and St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers.

Other congregations have decided to begin a “process of completion.” The Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy, based in South Carolina, started the process in 2008. The congregation said it could no longer provide a “viable community life” to new members and decided to sell its motherhouse. In 2022, its remaining sisters relocated to a nearby Episcopalian retirement community, according to the Sisters of Charity Federation website.

As of 2018, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported 45,100 religious sisters in consecrated life. There were 150,000 religious sisters in the U.S. in 1965, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.