Mallinckrodt, Pauline Von

Mallinckrodt, Pauline Von foundress of the Sisters of Christian Charity, was born at Minden, Westphalia, June 3, 1817. She was the sister of Hermann von Mallinckrodt, the eminent leader of the Catholic party in the Prussian legislature, a speaker and politician of great power, who died suddenly in Berlin, May 26, 1874, aged fifty-three years. When living with her father in Paderborn, Pauline set up a little asylum for blind children. She resolved to secure a permanent organization for carrying out her designs, Aug. 21, 1849. In November, 1850, she took her vows, and soon the sisters of Christian Charity was established. For twenty years the new institution enjoyed the favor of both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. In May 1872, the laws against the Catholic Church were passed by the Prussian government, and every house not devoted exclusively to nursing the sick was closed, and its inmates dispersed. In April 1873, mother Pauline yielded to the wishes of the German Catholics in America, took with her a detachment of sisters, and founded a house in New Orleans. In order to make proper provision for the American undertaking, she established another house at Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, which is for America what the house at Paderborn had been for Germany. In 1874 she received a request from the Chilian government to make a foundation in their country. In 1876 she went to Rome, and received the pope's approval of her congregation and the erection of two provinces for North and South America. She sailed for America in October 1879, by way of Cape Horn, and visited every house in the two Americas. She then set out to visit her houses in Belgium, Germany, and Bohemia, returning to Paderborn in March 1881. There she died, April 30 of that year. There were then (1881) twenty-eight houses of the sisters of Christian Charity in the United States, and forty in North and South America. See (N.Y.) Catholic Annual, 1882, page 94.