Merciful Sisters of the Holy Cross

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General view with the motherhouse, hospital and Theresianum
The mother house of the order

The Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross ( order abbreviation : SCSC , short: Kreuzschwestern or Ingenbohler Sisters ) are a religious order of the Catholic Church with Franciscan spirituality.

history

Theodosius Florentini, portrait mid 19th century
Painting by Maria Theresia Scherer in the parish church of St. Leonhard, Ingenbohl

In the 19th century a growing need arose as a result of the tremendous social, intellectual and economic upheavals. Father Theodosius Florentini OFMCap (1808–1865), a young religious from the Grisons Münstertal, wanted to alleviate this need with courageous measures. Although the highly talented young Capuchin priest was a declared enemy of revolutions, the radical Aargau government issued an arrest warrant against him on January 18, 1841. He fled to Alsace , where his social ideas took shape. A few months later he returned to Switzerland and in Altdorf he implemented the plan that had already been drawn up to found a sister institute. His motto was: “What is need of the time is the will of God.” He called the first three female aspirants there in autumn 1844 and gave them the first task of founding a girls' school in Menzingen, Zuerich . The small monastic community became the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross (Menzinger Sisters) in Menzingen in the canton of Zug in 1844 . The congregation grew very quickly, so that it was soon able to take over elementary schools in numerous congregations in central and eastern Switzerland.

The then 20-year-old Katharina Scherer from Meggen in the canton of Lucerne joined this community in March 1845. In 1845, Father Theodosius Florentini became cathedral pastor in Chur and in a short time made a name for himself as a committed pastor, preacher and social apostle. In 1850 Florentini founded his first hospital in Chur, the Kreuzspital; In 1852 he appointed the teaching sister Maria Theresia Scherer SCSC (1825–1888) to lead it. That same year, Father Theodosius Florentini made the trip to Rome , the papal approval to solicit for his work. Pius IX praised it and encouraged its founder to continue working. In 1855, Father Theodosius therefore acquired the Nigg'schen Hof, a farm on a hill in Ingenbohl on Lake Lucerne. Ingenbohl Monastery , the motherhouse of a new branch of the monastery , developed from the farm . In 1856, by an episcopal decision, the Menzing sisters and the Ingenbohl sisters were declared two independent institutes. Theodosius Florentini and Maria Theresia Scherer are therefore considered to be the founders of the monastery.

The founder of the monastery, Theodosius Florentini, died unexpectedly on February 15, 1865. The 40-year-old mother was faced with failed factory businesses with a mountain of debts. Together with her sisters she took over the whole bankruptcy estate and saved the institute and the good reputation of the founder. She died on June 16, 1888.

Today the Sisters of Charity are an international congregation of around 3,900 sisters in 17 countries. The motherhouse and generalate of the Sisters of the Cross is Ingenbohl Monastery.

Child abuse in children's homes

For decades, nuns of the community of Ingenbohl children in homes have inflicted severe suffering and abuse in several of the children's homes they run (e.g. in the Rathausen educational institution near Lucerne (1928–1970) and in the Steig children's home in Appenzell). This is shown by reports from independent expert commissions published in 2013 and 2017.

In the opinion of the commissions, the fact that there were attacks in the homes is also due to the difficult circumstances under which the sisters had to work to the point of exhaustion. They were inadequately trained, the infrastructure was inadequate, the care quotas were unreasonable, and the authorities were uninterested.

The monastery reacted to the reports with “sadness” and “regret” that “fellow sisters in individual cases acted inappropriately in their educational work”.

Provinces and Vicariates

Organizationally, the order is divided into provinces and vicariates . These are:

  • Baden-Württemberg
  • Central Europe
  • Italy
  • Croatia
  • Mother Province of Switzerland
  • Slovakia
  • Czech Republic
  • Western Switzerland
  • Brazil (Vicariate)
  • North India
  • South india
  • Taiwan (Vicariate)
  • Uganda
  • United States
  • Central India

There is also a religious office in Perm (Russia).

Mother Province of Switzerland

Religious Province of Central Europe

The Central Europe Province of the Order was formed in 2007 by amalgamating the four Austrian provinces, the provinces of Bavaria and Hungary and the Vicariate of Slovenia.

The Sisters of the Cross run a number of kindergartens and schools.

The Austrian provinces were:

Order of Baden-Württemberg

  • In Hegne (municipality of Allensbach on Lake Constance) there is a monastery in the former castle and the seat of the order province of Baden-Württemberg. The sisters run the St. Elisabeth conference and guest house, the Marianum school and the Maria Hilf nursing home.
  • Sankt Josefshaus Herten , facility for people with disabilities in the Herten district of the city of Rheinfelden (Baden) .

Monastery study

The monastery in Gemünden am Main took part in the monastery study . According to the results, nuns and women of the general population live almost equally long, closely followed by monks , who have an average life expectancy of one to two years shorter than both groups of women. Well below this are men of the general population who live an average of six years shorter than nuns and women of the general population and up to four and a half years shorter than monks.

Superior General

  • 1857–1888 Maria Theresia Scherer
  • 1888–1906 Maria Pankratia Widmer
  • 1906–1921 Maria Aniceta Regli
  • 1921–1933 Theresia Beck
  • 1933–1941 Maria Agnes Schenk
  • 1942–1954 Maria Diomira Brandenberg
  • 1954–1966 Elena Giorgetti
  • 1966–1978 Maria Edelfrieda Haag
  • 1978–1996 Gertrud Furger
  • 1996-2008 Louise-Henri Kolly
  • 2008– 0000Marija Brizar

Well-known sisters

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josefa Harter: Networked worldwide. The Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross in Hegne Monastery . In: Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur , Journal, March 31, 2015, pp. 5–7, quotation p. 6.
  2. ↑ Website of the parent company Ingenbohl
  3. ↑ Ingenbohl nuns tormenting little boys In: 20 minutes from January 23, 2013
  4. ↑ Abuse in children's homes: nuns as perpetrators, benefactors and victims In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 23, 2013
  5. ↑ Appenzell children's home: "The sisters hit us with the iron brush" In: 20 minutes from July 3, 2017
  6. ↑ Child abuse in the homes of the Ingenbohl sisters confirmed In: SRF of 23 January 2013
  7. ^ Province of Central Europe , Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross
  8. ↑ School Association of the Cross Sisters (Austria)
  9. ↑ http://stephanscom.at/edw/orden/scsc1.html
  10. ↑ Marc Luy : Why women live longer . Findings from a comparison of the monastery and general population. In: Materials on Population Science . No.  106 . Federal Institute for Population Research , 2002, ISSN  0178-918X , DNB  965668789 ( bib-demografie.de [PDF; 1.5 MB ; accessed on December 6, 2015] Zugl. Diploma thesis 1998). online PDF file, 1.5 MB ( Memento from December 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Marc Luy in: Hella Ehlers, Heike Kahlert , Gabriele Linke, Dorit Raffel, Beate Rudlof, Heike Trappe (eds.): Gender difference - and no end? Social sciences and humanities contributions to gender research . 1st edition. tape  8 . LIT Verlag, Berlin / Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-8258-1647-6 , 10 years monastery study - knowledge gained and open questions about the causes of the different life expectancy of women and men, p. 251–273 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  12. ^ Sister Marija Brizar confirmed as Superior General. In: kath.ch. August 1, 2014, accessed September 18, 2017 .

Web links