Mother Catherine Spalding

American Roman Catholic leader

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Mother Catherine Spalding (born Dec. 23, 1793, Charles county, Md., U.S.—died March 20, 1858, Nazareth, Ky.) was an American Roman Catholic leader under whose guidance the Sisters of Charity established a strong presence in Kentucky through their schools and welfare institutions.

Spalding was taken to frontier Kentucky by her widowed mother about 1799. She was later orphaned and reared by relatives. In December 1812 the Reverend (later Bishop) John David announced his plan to establish a Roman Catholic teaching sisterhood to serve the frontier region, and the next month Spalding was one of the first three young women to answer his call. In 1813 she was elected superior of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, which was established at St. Thomas’s Seminary, near Bardstown. The sisters performed their own domestic and farm work, made clothing for the students of nearby St. Thomas’s Seminary, visited the sick, and did other religious work. In 1814 they opened Nazareth Academy.

The sisters took their first vows in 1816, following which Mother Catherine was reelected superior. She stepped down in 1819 but remained the guiding force of the group, and she served again as superior from 1824 to 1831, from 1838 to 1844, and from 1850 to 1856. During that time the sisters established a school in Bardstown in 1819, St. Vincent’s Academy in Union county in 1820, a school in Scott county (later St. Catherine’s Academy, Lexington) in 1823, a school (now Presentation Academy) in Louisville in 1831, St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum in Louisville in 1832, a hospital (now St. Joseph’s) in Louisville in 1836, and the School of St. Frances at Owensboro in 1850. In 1824 the original convent moved to a new site in what is now Nazareth, Kentucky, and in 1829 the order’s original Nazareth Academy received a state charter as the Nazareth Literary and Benevolent Institution. Between terms as superior, Mother Catherine devoted herself to her institutions in Louisville, especially St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum. By the time of her death in 1858, the order had grown to 145 sisters in 16 convents.