Poor Clare Life Incompatible with American Lifestyle, 1876-1888: Mother Maddalena Bentivoglio Challenges the Perception

On August 12, 1875, Pope Pius IX said farewell to two Italian-born Poor Clares as they accepted his invitation to establish the Poor Clare life in the United States. The pope is reported to have offered the following assessment of American life in his counsel defining their mission:

. . . You . . . will go to a distant land, where men are to be found who are the same as pagans, living and dying without Baptism. You will indeed find men of great wealth, men devoted to traffic and speculation, interested in all things material and ever looking forward to temporal advantages. But as for the soul, you will find men taking little or no interest. And as for the higher forms of the spiritual life, a life devoted exclusively to prayer and contemplation, the bare ideal thereof is treated with derision and contempt by many. You, my dear daughters, must be to the people of your new home an example by your detachment from all earthly things. This will be to them a silent preaching, which, together with your prayers and your communion with God, will obtain for many souls the grace to understand that true happiness is not found in material temporal things. . . .¹

Within a year of their arrival to the United States, Mothers Maddalena Bentivoglio (1834-1905) and her blood sister, Mother Constanza (1836-1902), would hear statements consistent with the papal assessment. They did not, however, expect such disregard to come from American archbishops in New York and Philadelphia. Over the next ten years, Poor Clares and their growing community heard similar negative evaluations from bishops in Cleveland and Omaha. One exception, Archbishop Napoleon Joseph Perché (1805-1883) of New Orleans invited the Poor Clares to his archdiocese in 1877 and offered his insightful theological assessment of the situation to Mother Maddalena:

The good Archbishop of Philadelphia was, no doubt, obliged to take into consideration public opinion which, in this country, does not appreciate contemplative life nor understand the efficacy of prayer. You and I will probably be looked upon as lunatics, by the world at large and perhaps even by a certain number of Christians, but we shall remember that it is the sublime folly of the Cross which conquered the false and diabolical wisdom of the world.²

The perception that the Poor Clare life was incompatible with the American way of life and American Catholic culture in late nineteenth century forced Mother Maddalena Bentivoglio to confront social and episcopal opposition. Yet, her resourceful and resilient spirituality actually reflected the emerging American enterprising spirit. Maddalena's astute resourcefulness and her resiliency, founded on her trust in Divine Providence, her fidelity to her Poor Clare vocation, and her belief in the efficacy of prayer, led to the eventual establishment of the Poor Clares in the United States. For some, their religious practice became recognized as an antidote for counteracting the downside of pursuing the American material and temporal dream and challenging the pressures of American capitalism. For others, their lived spirituality became the locus for engaging or confronting ecclesiastical authority on both sides of the Atlantic.³

This essay will present an exploration of sources and situations crucial to understanding the cultural import of the early Poor Clare foundations in the United States. Through an interdisciplinary approach parallel to that described by Joseph Chinnici, OFM, professor of history at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, multidisciplinary attention will be given to the history of religious life, religious practice, and spirituality to illuminate evidence of marginalization of Poor Clare life from the narratives of the American Catholic community.⁴ That such marginalization exists is compounded by the sparse number of published and archival sources concerning attempts at Poor Clare foundations in the United States. Beyond the Poor Clare communities themselves little is known of struggles in New York, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Cleveland, and Omaha between 1876 and 1888. Nevertheless, meager existing accounts of successes and failures call into question the assumed notion that the Poor Clare life could not coexist with the American...