This is a wonderful church, but what a sad recent history. For nearly 200 years it was (from about 1830-2005), both a very large convent of the Society of the Sacred Heart (Religious of the Sacred Heart, or in French, Les Dames du Sacre Coeur), founded by the great St. Madeline Sophie Barat in 1800. She died in 1865, when she already had close to 3,000 sisters in her Order spread across Europe and the USA. They were renown as supurb teachers, and there were before the disaster of Vatican II, hundreds of Convents of the Sacred Heart schools....many of which were the traditional convent boarding schools for girls. There were dozens of them in France, England, Italy, and also in Latin America.
Saint Teresa of the Andes (Chile), one of the Church's youngest saints, was educated in a boarding school run by these once great nuns.
At their peak on the eve of Vatican II, there were 7.800 sisters. Unfortunatly, they were among the first to adopt radical innovations, and to discard the traditional habit.
Today, they are known as radical femminsts, dissenters and liturgical innovators. They have declined to about 2,600. They are gone from Santa Trinita dei Monti after well over 170 years, replaced by a new monastic Order of French nuns and friars. The new occupants are not traditionalists, but they are not the aged, radical dissidents the Society of the Sacred heart turned into. Very sad. Almost gone in the USA.....and mostly everywhere else.
This is a wonderful church, but what a sad recent history.
ReplyDeleteFor nearly 200 years it was (from about 1830-2005), both a very large convent of the Society of the Sacred Heart (Religious of the Sacred Heart, or in French, Les Dames du Sacre Coeur), founded by the great St. Madeline Sophie Barat in 1800. She died in 1865, when she already had close to 3,000 sisters in her Order spread across Europe and the USA. They were renown as supurb teachers, and there were before the disaster of Vatican II, hundreds of Convents of the Sacred Heart schools....many of which were the traditional convent boarding schools for girls. There were dozens of them in France, England, Italy, and also in Latin America.
Saint Teresa of the Andes (Chile), one of the Church's youngest saints, was educated in a boarding school run by these once great nuns.
At their peak on the eve of Vatican II, there were 7.800 sisters. Unfortunatly, they were among the first to adopt radical innovations, and to discard the traditional habit.
Today, they are known as radical femminsts, dissenters and liturgical innovators. They have declined to about 2,600. They are gone from Santa Trinita dei Monti after well over 170 years, replaced by a new monastic Order of French nuns and friars.
The new occupants are not traditionalists, but they are not the aged, radical dissidents the Society of the Sacred heart turned into.
Very sad.
Almost gone in the USA.....and mostly everywhere else.