“Sisters return to Gallatin after 40-year absence”
Prayers were answered and a tradition was reborn when Sisters Martha Ann Titus Grace Mary Luc and Mary Martha Hetzler arrived in Gallatin six months ago to teach at St. John Vianney Catholic School.
The sisters relocated from the St. Cecilia Motherhouse convent in Nashville. St. John Vianney, which originally opened its doors in 1949, closed in 1965 due to the lack of sisters available from the St. Cecilia convent to teach.
Unable to hire lay teachers at the time, the parishioners were forced to close the school and the sisters went back to the convent in Nashville.
[...] Four decades and many prayers later, the school reopened in 2003 in a new state-of-the-art facility with an enrollment capacity for 250 students in grades K-8.Unexpected growth — 10 to 15 new sisters annually — at Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia was another factor that prompted the sisters’ return to Gallatin.
It’s a contrarian story about religious vocations and how the growth of a particular order is having ripple effects for the Church around them.
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