“I thought Catholics were the worst people on earth.”

This story seems like a good way to start Women’s History Month. For all four years of the American Civil War, the French-born Jesuit Louis-Hipployte Gache (1817-1907) served as a Chaplain with the Confederate Army. His letters, written between May 1861 and July 1865, describe his experiences with the Tenth Louisiana Infantry. In 1981 Father Cornelius M. Buckley, S.J., collected Father Gache’s wartime letters together in a book titled A Frenchman, A Chaplain, A Rebel. During the Civil War some six hundred women religious served as nurses in the both the Union and Confederate armies. This excerpt is from a letter dated November 18, 1862. It shows the positive effect they had on the largely Protestant populace to whom they ministered:

The presence of nuns working long hours in the midst of the sick, and the care and attention they lavish on them is a constant sermon which, if it does not enlighten the understanding of men, touches at any rate and wins their hearts, and disposes them in a wonderful way to be receptive to a priest’s instruction and receive the faith. Normally it is enough for the sick to see these saintly women at work for a period of three or four days; then they are willing to believe in the ‘sisters’ church.’ For these men the proof of the Catholic Church is the life of the sisters. I have asked some men in the hospitals conducted by the nuns if they would like to be baptized Catholics. ‘Oh, no,’ they’d reply. ‘I don’t like that church a bit! I’ve never seen a Catholic, but I’ve heard a lot about them. The sisters’ church is the church for me!’
‘But the sisters’ church is the Catholic Church,’ I’d say.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. At least nobody has ever said that.’
‘All right, then,’ I’d add. ‘Let’s ask one of the sisters.,’ and I’d call one of the nuns over to the bed.
‘Sister,’ I’d ask, ‘is it true that you belong to the Catholic Church?’
‘Yes, sir, it’s true,’ she’d reply. ‘And that’s the source of the greatest happiness I have in this life.’
‘Well, I declare,’ the patient would say. ‘I’d never have suspected it. I’ve heard so many things… I thought Catholics were the worst people on earth.’
‘I hope you don’t think so now.’
‘Well, sister… I’ll tell you. If you say you’re a Catholic, I’ll certainly have a better opinion of Catholics from now on.’ And the next thing you’d know they’d be asking on their death beds to be baptized into the Catholic Church.