The Sisters Servants of Mary convent in the Country Club section of the Bronx, which has been serving the sick in the community for almost a century, is in the process of closing its doors due to a lack of vocation for the profession.
A congregation of the Catholic Sisters founded in Madrid, Spain in 1851, the Sisters Servants of Mary established a Province of the United States in 1913. The provincial government is based in the Kansas City, Kansas convent. The congregation currently has six convents in the U.S., including the one in the East Bronx, which fulfill the mission of caring for the sick and the dying in their own homes.
At the peak of its century in the Bronx, the convent housed anywhere from 25-30 sisters, who visited the homes of the sick in the community, usually staying overnight in order to care for them and resulting in a one-to-one system of sisters to families.
Sister Silvia Juarez first started at the Bronx convent in 2009, and has since left and returned three times. In an interview with the Bronx Times, Juarez said that during her time in the Bronx, she and her fellow sisters helped countless families, dealing with a minimum of three to four calls a day from families in need.
On June 9, Juarez said the Bronx convent had only nine sisters left, and just one week later that number was down to three. The sisters have been leaving for one of the other Sisters Servants of Mary convents across the country in order to live in a community where they can make the largest impact.
The Congregation of the Servants of Mary is currently in the process of selling the building that houses the Bronx convent, which is located on Country Club Road.
In an April letter to state Assemblymember Michael Benedetto, whose district includes the Country Club neighborhood, Juarez said, “Our foundress St. Maria Soledad Torres Acosta emphasized the importance of our Sisters living in full Community. For that reason, because of the few Sisters living here, they have decided that we should join other convents of the Sisters Servants of Mary.”
Juarez explained that the sisters are invested in creating a strong, populous community that serves their mission of one-to-one care for families. This mission requires at least 15 sisters per convent in order to attend to all of those in need, according to Juarez.
“Our lives get enriched by helping others and meeting more people,” Juarez said.
But Juarez said she’s noticed a decreasing inclination for joining a congregation and becoming a sister, especially from young women.
“We are very sad, we don’t want to go, but we need to go,” Juarez said. “We continue to pray for vocation, for more sisters. We need to have the biggest presence wherever we go so hopefully we get more young people to join us.”
The dwindling number of sisters at the Bronx convent is not specific to the borough, or even to the Congregation of the Servants of Mary in general; this trend can be observed at the national level.
According to a 2014 special report published by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the total number of religious sisters in the U.S. has declined from 180,000 in 1965 to 50,000 in 2014 – a 72% drop. Of those 50,000 religious sisters, only 1% were under the age of 40, whereas 26% are 80-89.
Furthermore, North America has the fastest declining number of sisters worldwide. According to a 2022 CARA special report, the population of Catholic sisters in North America declined 51.5% between 1999 and 2019, the most of any other region.
The impending closure of the Sisters Servants of Mary convent in the Bronx is just one example of the effects of the declining numbers of religious sisters in the U.S. Juarez says the sisters still have “a lot of hope” when it comes to the future of religious convents, although the closure of the Bronx convent where she has served still comes with a lot of sadness.
“We love the Bronx,” Juarez said. “We love the community.”
For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
