Mother Aloysia Lowe, S.C. (1835-1889)

Maria Lowe was born in Brooklyn, but grew up in an orphanage in Cincinnati. At age seventeen she joined the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. Taking the religious name Sister Aloysia, she taught in the sisters’ Ohio schools for nearly twenty years. In 1870, she was sent with a group of sisters to start a new foundation in Altoona, Pennsylvania, at the request of the Bishop of Pittsburgh. Sister Aloysia was named Mother Superior. Over the next few years they established several schools in the area.

In 1882, Mother Aloysia, an astute businesswoman, purchased the two hundred acre Jennings farm in Greensburg for $75,000. There the sisters established St. Joseph’s Academy, now Seton Hill University. She died on Christmas day 1889, just after the motherhouse was completed. It was said that Mother Aloysia “governed the community firmly but tenderly.” The Sisters also took a prominent role in healthcare, founding hospitals and orphanages. This was all in accord with their rule:

The principal end for which God has called and assembled the Sisters of Charity, is to honor Jesus Christ our Lord, the source and model of all charity, by rendering Him every temporal and spiritual service in their power in the persons of the poor, either sick, invalid, prisoners, insane, or those who, through shame, would conceal their necessity.