Pauline Mallinckrodt

Mallinckrodt, PAULINE, a sister of the Catholic political leader Hermann von Mallinckrodt (q.v.), and foundress of the Sisters of Christian Charity; b. at Minden, Westphalia, June 3, 1817; d. at Paderborn, April 30, 1881. Before she became a religious she had charge of an institution for the blind and an infant school at Paderborn. After the death of her father she went to Paris to induce Mother Barat (q.v.) to take the Paderborn institution for the blind under the care of her congregation. As, however, the Prussian Government would not permit a French congregation in Prussia, Pauline founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Christian Charity, August 21, 1849, and became its first superioress. The congregation was approved by Pius IX, February 21, 1863. It increased so rapidly that before the Kulturkampf, which temporarily annihilated it, it numbered 20 establishments and 250 members in various parts of Germany.

On May 1, 1873, the first sisters of this congregation arrived in the United States and took charge of the school in St. Henry’s Parish, New Orleans. On June 7, Pauline herself arrived, and made preparations for the foundation of a mother-house at Wilkesbarre, Pa. She then returned to Europe and temporarily transferred the European mother-house to Mont Guibert near Brussels. In 1879 she went to South America, visiting her recent foundation in Chili.

Thence she travelled by way of Panama to revisit the United States, where numerous houses of her institute had sprung up since 1873. (See Sisters of Christian Charity.)

MICHAEL OTT