CIVIL RIGHTS NUN

As we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, we are grateful for all who have gone before us, giving example of a life lived following the Lord and in service of others.  We close this month dedicated to saints with the third American woman being considered for canonization.

MOTHER MARGARET MARY JANE HEALY MURPHY, was born in 1833 and is considered to be an early civil rights activist. She founded the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate, the first order of sisters in the state of Texas, as well as the first free private school for African Americans in San Antonio, Texas.

Throughout her life, she helped the poor and reached out to help African Americans and Mexican Americans.

She was  born in Ireland  in 1833.  Her mother died when she was 6 and when she was 12 her father, a physician, emigrated to the United States.  For a time, she lived in Mexico, where she met her future husband, John Bernard Murphy.

The couple married in 1849 and later moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, where her husband worked as a lawyer and served as mayor. The well-to-do couple owned slaves there. While they had no biological children, the couple adopted three young girls who needed a home — two of whom later entered religious life.

In 1884, John died, leaving Margaret Mary a widow. Her life dramatically changed again, three years later, when she moved to San Antonio and heard a letter from the U.S. bishops read from the pulpit. In that letter, the bishops called on Catholics in the South to minister to the post-Civil War African American population.

Margaret Mary decided to answer that call. That same year, she funded construction for the first Catholic free school and church for African Americans in San Antonio.The school was named for a Jesuit saint, St. Peter Claver, who had spent his life helping slaves in Cartagena, present-day Colombia.

.Facing constant criticism and racial prejudice, she struggled to maintain a teaching staff, and the local bishop suggested that she start a religious congregation to help. In 1892, she and three other women became novices with the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur. A year later, the four made their first vows and the Sisters of the Holy Ghost and Mary Immaculate began.

 By the time of her death, the order had grown to 15 sisters and two postulants. She died in 1907 at age 74.

Mother Murphy's work led to the establishment of thirty nine missions throughout  Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. In the late 1960s, her religious order was renamed the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate and the school later changed its name to the Healy Murphy Center, which helps students who have dropped out of school and continues to have an excellent reputation for academics.