Catholic Sisterhoods

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 22, 4 June 1908, Page 31

Catholic Sisterhoods

There are 121 different Catholic Sisterhoods in .the United States (says the New York 'Catholic News'). The various Franciscan Orders;, 24 in all, count 6600 Sisters ; four Notre Dame Orders count 5700 Sisters, and six Sisters of Charity Orders count 5000 Sisters. Thus these 34 Orders alone, with 17,300 members, outnumber all the secular and regular clergy. Education and charity form the life work of most of this great and noble army of women. If we allow one teacher to every fifty pupils in our parochial schools, it will require 24,000 teachers to take care of the ,1,200,000 parish school pupils. Fully 20,000 of these teachers areSisters.