About

Since their founding, the Sisters of the Holy Cross have channeled their collective energies into education, social justice, advocacy, and health services for displaced and underserved peoples around the world. Many of these efforts brought them face to face with geo-political conflicts, violence, and loss. Historically, though, narratives of these global conflicts have overlooked the voices, perspectives, and impacts of these remarkable women and the people they served. This project seeks to spotlight their stories.

In so doing, we turn to material from the Congregational Archive of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, focusing on the sisters’ pioneering work with refugees and displaced persons during the American Civil War (1861-65) (theirs became the model for the Navy Nurse Corps, for example) as well as the formation of "Emergency Relief Teams" in the late twentieth century. These teams were comprised of individual Holy Cross sisters who agreed to be sent wherever and whenever the need for assistance arose, in particular as a result of the refugee crises in Cambodia (1979-80), Lebanon (1982-83), and El Salvador (1983-87). In each of these conflicts the sisters provided humanitarian aid and education, performed nursing duties, distributed supplies, and attended to the needs of the people who were displaced due to war and political unrest in their home countries. It is important that the work of the sisters, as well as the narratives of the refugees and displaced persons they assisted, do not go untold. Learn more about the Sisters of the Holy Cross and their dedication to refugee relief and displaced populations by visiting our "Meet the Sisters" pages.