“From the Archives” Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart

As the population of Catholics in Alexandria grew during World War II, Bishop Peter Ireton contracted the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart, an order of sisters headquartered in Towson, Maryland, to fill the need for catechists at Saint Mary. They arrived here in 1943.

Since they needed a convent, parishioner Thomas J. Fannon (1880-1946) offered to sell three townhouses he owned across the street from the church for a token amount of money. Two of the houses were converted into a convent, while the third was rented out. (This third house, on the south end of the houses, was eventually torn down to provide a walkway to the Pitt Street parking lot.)

Besides teaching religious education classes to students who did not attend Catholic schools, the sisters were also in charge of instructing adults seeking to convert to Catholicism. In addition, they regularly took a census of the parish. Since the parish already had Holy Cross Sisters in teaching at Saint Mary School, parishioners soon began to distinguish between the two orders by calling the Mission Helpers “the sisters across the street from the church.”

They remained an important part of the parish until 1968, when dwindling numbers of religious forced them to leave the parish. Lay volunteers then took over the religious education program, which now is led by parish staff aided by lay volunteers.

— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian

In 2020, to commemorate the 225th anniversary of our parish, we started “From the Archives” as a weekly feature online and in our bulletin to spotlight the history of Saint Mary’s. Due to its popularity, we are continuing the series in 2021. An archive of the features is located here.