Commentary: This is the place not just for Brigham’s band of Saints but also for a benevolent corps of Catholic nuns

My wife, Vicki, always says if you want to get something done, put a woman in charge of it. The 150-year-old story of the Holy Cross Sisters in Utah proves her point.

The Holy Cross Sisters first arrived here from their convent in Notre Dame, Indiana, on June 6, 1875. Sister Raymond (Mary) Sullivan and Sister Augusta (Amanda) Anderson traveled to Salt Lake City via train and stagecoach at the invitation of Father Lawrence Scanlan (soon to be Utah’s Catholic bishop).

Scanlan apparently shared my wife’s view about female organizing superpowers. He hoped the good order of sisters — originally from France but soon full of hardworking and devoted Irish Catholic women — would help his fledgling Catholic community build schools and meet other human and spiritual needs.

Sister Raymond was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1830. She initially worked as a seamstress and archivist at the Indiana convent but then devoted 17 years to teaching and hospital work in Utah.

Sister Augusta (later known as Mother Augusta after she was elected to lead the Holy Cross order) was born in 1830 in Virginia. Her own mother died when she was 4, and the surviving Anderson family moved west via prairie schooner.

Augusta joined Holy Cross and worked in its schools and medical facilities. A Civil War nurse, she managed two Union Army hospitals so well that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant exclaimed, “What a wonderful woman she is. She can control the men better than I can.”

Several other Holy Cross Sisters came west soon after those first two. With their trademark energy and industriousness, these magnificent women had started a school and a hospital by fall 1875 in Salt Lake City.

During the next century and a half in the state, they also would create a dozen other schools, found two other hospitals, start an orphanage, form a school of nursing, build a college, and launch numerous other social service ministries.

They also would support almost every other local Catholic institution, including teaching me at St. Joseph High School in Ogden. They taught Utah Monsignor Terrence Fitzgerald, too, at Judge Memorial Catholic High School.

In a 2008 article for the Holy Cross History Association, Fitzgerald noted that more than 1,300 Holy Cross Sisters served in the Diocese of Salt Lake City. He said 50 of them were born here, and that for 93 sisters, Mount Calvary Cemetery was their “last assignment.”

Many more now rest at Our Lady of Peace, the lovely Holy Cross convent cemetery I visited in Indiana last autumn. That morning, a soft white mist floated up from the nearby St. Joseph River and lingered on the outskirts of the sacred site.

It felt like the gentle spirits of the good sisters were there, watching us, curious and thrilled to have a few living souls stroll by, and perhaps hoping I’d share some of their Utah stories. There are many extraordinary tales to be told.

How the sisters impacted Utah’s past

After they first arrived, the sisters rode horses, climbed mountains and endured many hardships while visiting mining camps in the state.

“The outlook was wild and gloomy,” Scanlan later wrote, “but they were not discouraged.”

Interested not just in her fellow Catholics, Sister Augusta also made friends with the Lion of the Lord, Latter-day Saint leader Brigham Young. One of his great-granddaughters later joined the order.

Some Holy Cross Sisters born in Utah graced the front porches of family reunions and other events. Many were from well-known families and joined along with two or three siblings.

The early sisters used nursing skills learned during the Civil War to start hospitals that cared for the sick, the poor and the unwanted in Utah for over a century. When one sister died in 1936, a Salt Lake Tribune editorial called her one of the “ministering angels who now and then are permitted to visit the earth.”

The sisters hosted Babe Ruth during his 1927 Utah visit to the orphanage they operated. They wrote acclaimed poetry and scholarly works.

They cared for broken-down Irish miners and old horses and were among the few people who would treat Utah AIDS patients in the 1980s. Monsignor Fitzgerald called them the “compassionate face and the caring hands” of the Utah church.

The old Holy Cross Hospital Chapel the sisters built has been an oasis for thousands since 1904, making it the oldest surviving Catholic building in Salt Lake City. I found comfort and support there during the birth of all three of our children in the 1990s.

I visited it again recently, thanks to the kindness of the current owners at CommonSpirit Health. They even let me climb the balcony and ring the old church bell.

Although much has changed, the hospital’s president, Bryan McKinley, still feels the spirit of the Holy Cross Sisters there. He says it gives him comfort and strength to know “we are not alone.”

The chapel — now an interfaith haven — was damaged in a 2020 earthquake and needs some tender loving care. Jeremy Bradshaw, president of the CommonSpirit Utah Market, says officials are working diligently to “restore the sacred space.”

How the sisters still impact Utah today

The Holy Cross Sisters are not resting on their 150-year-old Utah legacy and laurels.

When they sold their medical facilities here in the 1990s, they started and funded a nonprofit — Holy Cross Ministries of Utah — that still meets education, health and justice needs.

I serve on the group’s board of trustees. When I started volunteering, I traveled back to Notre Dame and met the president who now leads this group of amazing women.

A fellow lawyer, Holy Cross Sister Sharlet Ann Wagner has worked with immigrants in Washington, D.C., served as an immigration attorney in Utah, done clinic work in Uganda, and taught high school English and journalism in the United States.

Sister Sharlet gave my wife and me an after-hours tour of the Holy Cross heritage and archives room, which tells the Sisters’ long history in words, photos and exhibits. Many of the displays involve Utah.

When I asked her later about the Holy Cross sesquicentennial in Utah, Sister Sharlet said, “We are proud and grateful that our forebears made the pioneering trek to Utah 150 years ago, giving remarkable life to our motto/mission of ‘find a need and meet it.’ What followed was an amazing outpouring of kindness, love and service that continues today, through Holy Cross Ministries. We hope to keep working with our Utah brothers and sisters for the next 150 years, too.”

Holy Cross Ministries CEO Emmie Gardner once conducted an oral history interview with Sister Joan Marie Steadman. Sister Joan has done hospital and parish work in Utah, served as president of the Holy Cross order, and even led the national Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

During the interview, Gardner noted the upcoming 150th anniversary of the sisters’ arrival in Salt Lake City saying, “It’s hard to imagine Utah without the Holy Cross Sisters.”

Displaying the wit and humility of so many of these remarkable women, Sister Joan smiled and replied, “It’s hard to imagine the Holy Cross Sisters without Utah.”

Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City who frequently represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. His book “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks,” about growing up with the monks at an old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, was published by Paraclete Press and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best nonfiction book in 2022. He blogs at https://theboymonk.com.