Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters Have Become Fixtures

in Catholic Schools

When the foundresses of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters of Wichita decided to accept Bishop David M. Maloney’s invitation in 1976 to live and serve in the Diocese of Wichita, they were severing all ties with their former life in California to teach, at Bishop Maloney’s request, in the Diocese’s Catholic schools.

Thus, from their first days in Wichita, two defining characteristics of the IHM Sisters were already established.  Their commitment was to the Diocese of Wichita, and their apostolic work would be directed by the pastoral plan of the Bishop.

1976 was not an auspicious time to start a religious order of women to teach in Catholic schools.  In 1976, Catholic school enrollment in the Diocese of Wichita was 7,189, a drop of almost 5,000 students in just ten years.  There were 31 fewer Catholic schools.  The number of teaching Sisters had declined, from 298 in 1966 to 130 in 1976.  The number of religious women was plummeting.  What do you suppose were the odds of survival for a new order with a handful of members, no permanent home, and cultural trends that portended fewer women entering religious life?

In 1976 there were four Catholic high schools in the Diocese.  St. Mary’s Colgan, Pittsburg, still had a number of Sisters of St. Joseph, while Trinity, Hutchinson was served by Dominican Sisters.  Kapaun Mount Carmel had a long tradition with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a few remaining Jesuit priests.  Bishop Carroll High School had endured difficult times as the Christian Brothers had chosen to leave the diocese entirely, and a number of teaching Sisters had left as well.  And so it was to Bishop Carroll that Bishop Maloney assigned the IHM Sisters.

From 1976 to 1997, Bishop Carroll was the only school in which the IHM Sisters taught, and so it is not surprising that the image of the Sisters is often tied to the West-side high school.  For over twenty-five years, the Sisters’ motherhouse was in a convent on the Bishop Carroll campus.  Distinctive in their dark blue habits, the Sisters were popular icons of Bishop Carroll’s Catholic identity, and the Sisters were frequently seen around the campus at all hours, walking between the convent and school, recreating, attending school events, or welcoming visitors and inquirers.  In particular, one of the foundresses, Sister (later Mother) Giovanni Oliveri, IHM, who taught at Bishop Carroll from 1976 to 1999, was so fiercely loyal to Bishop Carroll that in 1996 when the superintendent asked her as general superior to send Sisters to Carroll’s sister school, Kapaun Mount Carmel, Sister Giovanni’s reply was a very firm and insistent “NO!”

Early on, the foundresses of the IHM Sisters made the wise decision to require each teaching Sister to obtain Kansas certification.  Not only did this provide the Sisters with invaluable pedagogical training, but it also increased the Sisters’ value to their schools as they could not only teach religion but were also specialists in a secular field as well. 

However, as the number of religious and trained religion teachers in the high schools continued to decline, the Sisters focused more and more of their preparation and effort on teaching religion.  Many have completed a Master’s degree in theology or religious education.  As the number of IHM Sisters has increased, the convent has become a school itself as the more experienced Sisters help train the less experienced ones.

In 1997, the IHM Sisters began living and teaching in Hutchinson.  In 1998, the Sisters began teaching at Kapaun Mount Carmel.  With a continued increase of vocations, it is hoped that in the not-so-distant future, the Sisters will be able to serve in the Diocese’s fourth high school in Pittsburg.

The first grade schools in which the Sisters served were St. Teresa’s and Holy Cross, both in Hutchinson.  The Sisters have also served in the parish grade schools at St. Elizabeth Seton, St. Peter-Schulte, and St. Francis of Assisi.  This fall, one Sister will begin teaching in the parish where their motherhouse is now located, St. Joseph.  With nine teaching Sisters in 2007, the IHM Sisters will have the most Catholic school teachers of any religious order in the diocese.  As new aspirants come forward, there is even a hope that some day there will again be at least one teaching Sister in every Catholic school in the Diocese.  How far this small religious order has come from the three pilgrims who landed in Wichita in 1976.