Pauline Mallinckrodt

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Pauline von Mallinckrodt.

Pauline von Mallinckrodt (June 3, 1817 – April 30, 1881) was the German-born foundress of the Sisters of Christian Charity, a Roman Catholic order of nuns.

Life

Pauline von Mallinckrodt was born at Minden, Westphalia, Prussia, on June 3, 1817, the daughter of German politician Detmar von Mallinckrodt. The distinguished German parliamentarian Hermann von Mallinckrodt was her younger brother.

In 1826 her father was transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle where Pauline attended St. Leonard's Academy. Among her classmates were Clara Fey, who founded the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus and Mary Frances Schervier, foundress of the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis. In 1832 she continued her studies at a French academy in Liege. After a tour through Switzerland in 1833 with her parents, she returned to Aix-la-Chapelle and was introduced into aristocratic society.

Upon her mother's death from typhus in 1834, Pauline took over management of her father's household and the education of her three younger siblings. In 1840 her father retired from public service to his manor at Boeddekken near Paderborn. The poor of the village would ask her to tend the sick. In winter she and her father lived in Paderborn where there was a ladies society that tended the sick in their homes, and Pauline joined this group. In 1840 the society opened a kindergarten to provide safekeeping and care for neglected children and placed it in her charge. From this developed an institution for blind children who were provided a home in a former Capuchin monastery, where Pauline took up residence after the death of her father in 1842.

Sisters of Christian Charity

In 1846 she went to Paris to induce Mother Madeleine Sophie Barat, the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart, to place the Paderborn institution for the blind under the care of the sisters of Barat's congregation. However, because the Prussian Government would not permit a French-run religious congregation to operate in Prussia, Pauline found it necessary to establish the Congregation of the Sisters of Christian Charity on August 21, 1849. She was chosen the order's first superior. The congregation was approved by Pius IX, on February 21, 1863. It spread so rapidly that in the years before the Kulturkampf (1871-1878), which temporarily halted its growth, it ran 20 establishments and had 250 members in various parts of Germany.

The congregation began to receive requests from abroad for Sisters to teach German immigrant children. On May 1, 1873, the first sisters of the congregation arrived in the United States and took charge of the school at St. Henry's Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana. On June 7, 1873, Pauline herself arrived in the United States, and made preparations for the foundation of a mother-house at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Other foundations were established in New York, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Ulm, Minnesota.

In 1875 the German government passed a law authorizing the government to take over administration of any property still held by religious communities. Mother Pauline then moved the motherhouse to Belgium. In 1875 Bishop Konrad Martin of Paderborn was incarcerated in the fortress of Wesel, because of the Falk Laws. A few months later, he succeeded in escaping and found refuge with the Sisters of Christian Charity, at the motherhouse in Mont St. Guibert. Upon his death in 1879, Mother Pauline accompanied the body secretly across the border to Paderborn, where the bishop was buried with full solemn honors.

In 1879 she traveled to South America, visiting the congregation's foundation in Chile. From there she traveled by way of Panama to the United States, where numerous houses of her institute had sprung up since 1873. At the time of her death in 1881, there were 9 establishments in Europe, 27 in the US, and 8 in Chile. She died of pneumonia on April 30 in Paderborn.

Veneration

Pauline Mallinckrodt was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Rome on April 14, 1985.

Legacy

The congregation owns and operates the Haus Pauline von Mallinckrodt retirement home in Paderborn.

The Mallinckrodt Scholars Program at Loyola University, Chicago is a four-year progressive program for undergraduates at Loyola University Chicago to developing leadership reflecting Pauline von Mallinckrodt's spirit of compassion and action.