Clement Sisters
The Cooperative of the Sisters of Mercy of the Blessed Virgin and Sorrowful Mother Mary , also Clement Sisters , is a Catholic women's order of the diocese of Münster , which is primarily dedicated to nursing the sick . The parent company is located in Münster .
history
19th and 20th centuries
The congregation was founded in 1808 by Clemens August Droste zu Vischering , vicar capitular of the Münster diocese, based on the model of the Vincentian Sisters . Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg provided the financial means for the foundation. The rain of the seminary , Bernhard Overberg , helped build the cooperative internally.
During the time of the French occupation, church life and, above all, the service to the sick in the diocese of Munster were very neglected. In the years 1810 to 1813, troops passing through brought in typhus , dysentery and other diseases. The first General Superior, Mother Maria Alberti , and her four co-sisters cared for the sick and dying with great sacrifice. From 1820, the sisters took over nursing in the Clemenshospital in Münster , which had been done by friars up until then. The sisters were soon popularly called Clement sisters .
The number of sisters rose rapidly, in 1858 there were around 200 members of the order, in 1908 there were 1,377 sisters in 88 branches . In the same year the Raphaelsklinik was founded in the immediate vicinity of the mother house of the order, sponsored by the Clement Sisters. A nursing school was also set up there for the Sisters of Mercy Cooperative.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and the First World War , the cooperative had only a few victims to complain about, but during the Second World War the parent company and many branches were bombed out. More than 100 sisters were killed or went missing in the hospitals in the east.
In 1958 the order had 128 branches with 2362 sisters. Since the 1960s, however, the number of sisters has fallen sharply, as in almost all German women's orders.
21st century
In 2001 there were 497 sisters in 52 offices in the congregation. The convents are still mainly in Westphalia , on the Lower Rhine and in western Lower Saxony . The sisters run their own nursing, nutrition and infant care schools. In addition to working in hospitals, they also work in children's and nursery schools, convalescent homes and kindergartens.
Sister Euthymia , a member of the Order who died on September 9, 1955, was beatified on October 7, 2001 .
Sister Charlotte Schulze Bertelsbeck was elected Superior General on January 7, 2009 to succeed Sister Christel Grondmann. In 2015 she was re-elected for a further six-year term.
A controversial echo in the public sparked in the spring of 2014 the knowledge of the way the order dealt with Sister Milgitha, bourgeois Paula Kösser (* 1935 in Stadtlohn ), who came to Rwanda as one of the first Clement sisters in the early 1970s and in 1994 during the genocide Had witnessed what had happened and had built an orphanage for surviving children. She had been expelled from the order in September 2010 by Bishop Felix Genn , the highest superior of the religious order, because she had refused to return to Germany and give up her health center.
literature
- Clemens August von Droste zu Vischering: About the cooperatives of the merciful sisters, especially about the establishment of one of them, and their services in Münster . Aschendorff, Münster 1833.
- Relinde Meiwes: "The Lord's Workers". Catholic women's congregations in the 19th century. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-593-36460-3 , pp. 91-93.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article: Sr. Charlotte Schulze Bertelsbeck new Superior General of the Clement Sisters of January 8, 2009 on Orden online accessed on January 8, 2009
- ↑ Sister Charlotte Schulze Bertelsbeck remains superior general . Clement Sisters. January 16, 2015. Accessed August 31, 2019.
- ↑ Andrea Jeska : The cast out savior. In: Die Zeit No. 16/2014, April 10, 2014.
- ↑ Elmar Ries: Diocese of Münster files a complaint with the press council. In: Westfälische Nachrichten , April 14, 2014, accessed on October 8, 2019.
- ↑ Thorsten Ohm: Great media response after the dispute about Sister Milgitha. In: Münsterland Zeitung , April 19, 2014, accessed on October 8, 2019.