Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America Field Trip

Discover some of the amazing Presentation women who exhibited courage and leadership during the Civil War, the Gold Rush, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Influenza Epidemic, the Civil Rights Movement, and Hurricane Katrina at the national touring exhibit of Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America at The California Museum, in Sacramento.

Join us on our custom coach bus when the Sisters of the Presentation go to see this wonderful exhibit of Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America at The California Museum, in Sacramento, on Monday, February 27, 2012.

The cost is forty-five dollars ($45) per person and it includes the Luxury Roundtrip Tour Bus from the San Francisco Presentation Motherhouse, a mid-morning snack on the bus and Admission and Docent Tour of the exhibit Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America.

To RSVP for any of these events or to donate click on Shopping Cart at the top of this page.

Presentation Sisters Featured in National Exhibit

By Chris Doan, Archivist
 

The nationally traveling exhibit, Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America, sponsored by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, presents the historic contributions made by Catholic sisters to this country.

In the section From Kindergarten to College, a projector continuously runs photographs of Sisters in the ministry of education from the 19^th century to the present.  Photographs of two Presentation schools are featured -- Saint Joseph School, Berkeley (1880s) and the Salesian’s Earthquake Refuge School (1906) in San Francisco, where Presentation Sisters taught.

In the Spirited Adventurers’ section of the exhibit, the scroll of the first San Francisco Presentation Sisters is encased in a window box with a handle for viewers to turn for viewing.

The original scroll is located at the Sisters of the Presentation's Sacred Heart Convent (Shalom Community) in Kilcock, Ireland.
The Kilcock convent was originally founded as a novitiate by Mother Mary Teresa Comerford in 1878 as a place to train women in religious life as Presentation Sisters and eventually become members of the San Francisco community. 

It can be surmised that Mother Mary Teresa drew the scroll to share with the novice sisters the adventure she and four other Presentation nuns experienced in establishing the American foundation.  The scroll format is conducive to storytelling in that the narrative can be told in sections and thus give the listener a sense of anticipation of what happens next.

The scroll was loaned to Presentation Archives, San Francisco to be digitized for accessibility and exhibiting purposes.

Their stories are conveyed through a wealth of archival treasures, much of which is being presented for the first time in public and to a national audience. 

Archival items from the San Francisco Presentation Archives featured in the exhibit, include a 19th century scroll narrative of the sisters’ journey from Ireland to San Francisco, photographs of the sisters’ ministry in education, and letters written by sisters about their experiences during the time of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.

Women and Spirit is also coming January 24, 2012 to June 3, 2012 at The California Museum, at 1020 'O' Street, Sacramento, California, 95814.

For more information, including the exhibit schedule, please visit Women and Spirit

For a look at Presentation ministries today, click on Leading the Way Around the Bay