Mother Frances Xavier Warde

Mother Frances Xavier Warde (1810 - 1884)

When the word “pioneer” is used in the story of America’s early years and especially the expansion westward, what immediately comes to mind are brawny men with steely eyes and flintlock long rifle in the crook of their arm as they surveyed the next mountain. However, one of the most indefatigable and passionate of all the men and women who went west with the country was a small, quiet woman of impressive presence and steely resolve to serve the young, the sick, the uneducated and the imprisoned and marginalized.

Frances Warde was born in County Laois, Ireland in 1810 into a well-off family of merchants and landowners. Having lost her mother at an early age, Frances was raised by aunts who instilled in her not only a firm religious foundation but a love of the charms of high society. Feeling called to do something more with her life for God and others, Frances was directed to the newly formed Sisters of Mercy, founded by Mother McAuley, and entered the congregation in 1828.

With their focus on education, health care and care for the poor, the orphaned, the homeless and the marginalized, it was only a matter of time before the Sisters of Mercy were called to the United States. In 1843, Frances (now known as “Mother” in the tradition of the Irish nuns) embarked on a torturous, dangerous transatlantic trip to America on the Queen of the West.

Arriving in Pittsburgh, the sisters not only found a tremendous workload cut out for them but anti-Catholicism as well. The Know-Nothings, a nativist party that banded together in secrecy to oppress primarily Catholic immigrants from Europe, were powerful, active and intent on thwarting the work of the nuns.  While advocating peace and non-violence, Mother Frances would not be cowed, and the Know-Nothings backed down and allowed the nuns to stay.

Moving on to the Midwest, Mother Frances and her sisters became the first congregation of nuns to live and minister in the sprawling city on the lake called Chicago. Fulfilling a promise to the newly ordained, Irish-born bishop of Chicago, William Quarter, the sisters under Mother Frances’s tireless direction established schools, hospitals, orphanages and what would be known as St. Xavier University and Mercy Hospital, still operate and flourish to this day. Mother Frances Xavier Warde died in 1884, serving God and others to the end.