As St. Vincent’s main hospital building came down, a new project broke ground on the medical center’s campus in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood.
The Women Religious Archives Collaborative Heritage Center will house documents and artifacts from orders of Catholic women around the country. Sister Susan Durkin, an Ursuline, is leading the $24 million project.
One collection at the center will feature Sister Ignatia Gavin. A member of the Sisters of Charity, the order that founded St. Vincent, Gavin helped to start Alcoholics Anonymous with Dr. Bob Smith.
Another collection will highlight Sister Dororthy Kazel, the Cleveland-born Ursuline who was killed by the national guard of El Salvador in 1980 along with lay worker Jean Donovan and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford.
There are far fewer Catholic nuns in the U.S. today than there were a half century ago. But the center isn’t meant just to be a museum to what used to be. It could also serve as a “big vocation poster,” Durkin said.
“One of the narratives that’s out there is that religious life is dying,” she said. “We understand that there is an evolution that happens in religious life. It has evolved and changed for centuries, and it has never gone away.”
