Franciscan Sisters of Erlenbad
The Franciscan Sisters of Erlenbad ( Obersasbach in Baden) are a Roman Catholic women's order . In North America, where the Generalate is located today , they are also known under the name School Sisters of St. Francis ( abbreviation : SSSF ).
The congregation was founded in 1859 by Pastor Franz Xaver Lender in what is now Rheinmünster , who placed orphans in the abandoned Benedictine Abbey of Schwarzach in the Black Forest and established an order of sisters to look after them. The first sisters were Sr. Alexia Höll, Sr. Alfons Schmidt and Sr. Clara Seiter.
Because of the Kulturkampf , these sisters emigrated to the USA in 1873 and built their first St. Joseph monastery in Milwaukee in 1874. The congregation continued to develop independently there and expanded rapidly. Since 1900 the order has been a congregation under papal law .
From 1895 they also set up branches in Germany and Switzerland again, the first being the monastery in Erlenbad. In 1907 the German province became independent under the name Erlenbader Franziskanerinnen . This province now also includes branches in Honduras .
From the beginning, the sisters worked mainly in parish schools in North America because religious education is not allowed in state schools in the USA.
The nuns are also active in kindergartens, hospitals, schools and old people's homes today. The congregation is, for example, one of the shareholders of the Regional Association of Church Hospitals gGmbH, founded in 2000 and based in Freiburg im Breisgau. As one of the first orders, the sisters founded dormitories for working girls and students. Since the 1970s there have been two provinces in India and one province in South America.
Today there are around 1200 sisters worldwide, 700 of them in the United States.
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Coordinates: 48 ° 38 ′ 20.3 " N , 8 ° 6 ′ 49" E