“It’s been said that faith makes possible that which circumstance renders implausible.“ With those words Archbishop William Lori began to explain in a Baltimore Sun Op-Ed last year the remarkable history and the continuing impact of an amazing woman – Mother Mary Lange.
Born in Cuba in the 1780’s, Elizabeth Clarisse Lange came to the U.S., settling in Baltimore in in the early 1800’s. She saw here a great need for the education of children in the city’s rapidly growing free black population. Lange founded the first religious congregation of women of African descent in the United States, the Oblate Sisters of Providence. The school the Sisters created 192 years ago was the first catholic school for children of color in America, and it continues to this day – now known as St. Francis Academy.
Artist’s rendering of the Mother Mary Lange School learning…
