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July 21, 2023, Adrian, Michigan – A quote from Mother Camilla Madden, Founding Prioress of the Adrian Dominican Sisters – “How good God is to us!” – was the very fitting theme as the Congregation celebrated its inaugural Founder’s Day.

June 27, 2023, marked the 100th anniversary of the Dominican Sisters based in Adrian becoming an independent Congregation: the Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary, familiarly known as the Adrian Dominican Sisters. Before that date, the Sisters in Adrian were part of the St. Joseph Province of the Dominican Sisters of Newburgh, New York.

Associate Nancy Mason Bordley, Director of the Office of Dominican Charism, offers a reflection during Morning Prayer.

Festive Founder’s Day activities began with Morning Prayer, led by Associates and Co-workers. The prayer was a reminder of the vital role that the Sisters’ Partners in Mission – Benefactors, Associates, and Co-workers – have played in the life of the Congregation in the past 100 years. 

A prayer recited during the service said, “We remember the many gifts shared by the Sisters, Associates, and those of us who have joined them in work at each of the sponsored institutions. We appreciate with gratitude those who minister today in the same spirit and vision of those who have gone before us.” 

In her reflection during the Founder’s Day Mass, Sister Elise D. García, OP, Prioress of the Congregation, recalled the many pioneer women who, over the past 100 years, were drawn by Mother Camilla’s “visionary leadership and generous spirit.” Sisters came to the Congregation from all over the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and Asia. 

Sister Elise pointed to the mirroring image of the newly independent Congregation of 100 years ago and today’s community – both numbering about 400 Sisters. The pattern resonates “in the lives of the first 400 pioneer women, the 412 of us alive today, and the more than 2,000 other Sisters who in the other mirroring times between then and now fully gave their lives to this radical purpose and are now watching over us,” Sister Elise said. She added that the pattern will continue to resonate in the lives of the Sisters who carry on the Dominican mission into the future.

 

   

Left: Sister Luchy Sori, OP, demonstrates the exuberance of Founder’s Day with a Liturgical Dance at the conclusion of Mass. Right: Sister Elise D. García, OP, speaks at the opening of the evening program of Founder’s Day.

 

Much of the history of the Adrian Dominican Congregation on Founder’s Day was fleshed out in a video shown that evening, in a portrayal of Mother Camilla by Sister Cheryl Liske, OP, and a series of articles written by Associate Arlene Bachanov, of the Congregation’s History Office. 

Portraying Mother Camilla, Sister Cheryl noted that the independence of the Adrian community had already been a reality for many years. “By the time of the announcement, we were 440 Sisters in 50 different missions throughout the country, proving we were not only independent but growing all the more,” she said. The biggest surprise, she added, was in the way the announcement was made: by Detroit Bishop Michael Gallagher during a graduation ceremony at St. Joseph Academy.

“Mother Camilla” added that separating convents and missions from the Motherhouse was “a common practice.” The Edmonds Dominican Sisters (then the Everett Dominican Sisters) became an independent congregation in the same year as the Adrian Congregation. The two congregations merged in 2003.

Dominican Sisters came to Adrian from Newburgh in 1879 and 1880 to staff two parish schools in Adrian. More formally, Sisters came to set up their own institution, a hospital for injured railroad workers, in 1884. “Since the six Sisters’ arrival to staff the ‘Elm House’ in Adrian in 1884, 39 years of multiple grace-filled decisions brought us to that moment in 1923,” Sister Cheryl said during her presentation.

Those “grace-filled decisions” focused in many ways on the Sisters’ ministries in the Adrian area. “Originally, the hospital was a ministry of a province of the New York congregation based in Traverse City, Michigan,” Arlene wrote. “In August 1891, however, a novitiate separate from the one in Traverse City began to take shape in Adrian, resulting in a second Michigan province. It was to this new Province of St. Joseph that Mother Camilla Madden was dispatched in August 1892 to become Provincial.”

As the new Provincial, Mother Camilla saw that the hospital was not a success. “While I deeply admired the nuns for their dedication to our life and mission, the drudgery of the nuns trying to maintain the failing hospital sickened me,” Sister Cheryl said as she portrayed Mother Camilla. “A school for young girls learning and laughing right here in Adrian would bring the mission to life again, I thought.” It wasn’t until 1895 that Mother Camilla received permission from Detroit Bishop John Foley to open the boarding school, St. Joseph Academy, which has since brought many vocations to the Sisters.

 

Sister Cheryl Liske, OP, portraying Founding Prioress Mother Camilla Madden, has a special encounter with Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, Prioress from 2016 to 2022.

 

St. Joseph Academy helped spur the growth of the rest of the Motherhouse Campus, as well as the ministries of the Sisters. Only six students attended when the Academy opened in the fall of 1896, but Sister Camilla had a plan. “Congregational lore has it that Mother Camilla promised God that she would build a beautiful new chapel if she could get 15 students,” Arlene wrote. “Within two weeks’ time, the Academy had 15 students – with more arriving shortly thereafter. Mother Camilla kept her promise with the construction of Holy Rosary Chapel beginning in 1905.” 

“Growth in membership was exponential during Mother Camilla’s time, as was the growth of the Motherhouse campus,” Arlene wrote. “From roughly 36 Sisters at the time of her arrival in 1892, the congregation grew by the time of Mother Camilla’s death in January 1924 to 440 Sisters staffing 52 schools in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, Florida, and New Mexico.”

Today, the Sisters and Associates serve in 21 states, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Norway. As the Congregation enters its second century of service, the Sisters will carry out the mission with deeper collaboration with other congregations of Dominican Sisters – and with the help of all Partners in Mission. As Mother Camilla said to the Sisters and all who partner with them, “Go forth in the spirit of all the founders, into futures yet unseen and as of yet unknown.”  
 

Feature photo at top: Sister Cheryl Liske, OP, portraying Founding Prioress Mother Camilla Madden, has a special encounter with her “successor,” Sister Elise D. García, OP, during an evening program on Founder’s Day.