Mother Spalding and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

Religion & Spirituality, History, Christianity, Education

4.8 • 969 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Mother Catherine Spalding spent 45 years leading and building the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Louisville and central Kentucky. Born in Maryland in 1793, her family moved to the Bardstown, Kentucky area when she was very young. She became an orphan at an early age, and lived with relatives until joining the fledgling order in 1813. She was elected the first Mother Superior that year, when she was 19 years old. She died in 1858, after her order had grown significantly, and was responsible for dozens of schools, orphanages, infirmaries, and homes for the homeless and destitute. In the 21st century she was named one of the 16 most influential persons in the history of Louisville and Jefferson County — the only woman on the list — and a statue of her was unveiled in 2015. It stands outside the Cathedral of the Assumption, and it is the only statue of a woman erected in a public place in Kentucky.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.
0:11.0	If you like this podcast and would like to support our work, please visit American Catholic History.org
0:17.5	slash support. I'm Noelle Heister Crow. And I'm Tom Crow.
0:21.6	Today we're talking about Mother Catherine Spalding, whom we're calling the Mother
0:26.5	Seton of the West.
0:27.7	And she really is in so many ways.
0:30.0	But of course, when we say the West here, we mean early 19th century America.
0:34.7	At that point, Louisville, Kentucky was the West, not, you know, Tucson, Arizona.
0:39.4	Yes, Louisville was a frontier town in 1813, and central to Kentucky was where people moved to get away
0:46.4	from the oppressive East Coast. Yes. And that was what Catherine Spalding's parents did. And it was a good
0:53.6	thing for thousands of children, homeless, and the elderly that they did so
0:57.5	because it's where Catherine labored for 45 years.
1:01.3	And as her legacy, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, which she helped to found,
1:06.4	continue her work all around the world.
1:09.4	Also, Louisville named her one of the 16 most influential people
1:14.0	in Louisville and Jefferson County history, and they erected a statue of her outside the
1:19.2	Cathedral of the Assumption in 2015. She was the only woman on that list of 16, and she is the only
1:26.6	woman who has been honored with a public statue
1:28.7	in the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky.
1:31.4	Yeah, we saw that statue when we were in Louisville back in August of 2021.
1:35.4	Seeing it and learning her story while in Kentucky on that pilgrimage, more or less led to this episode.
1:40.7	And we'll see that statue again next month when we're on pilgrimage again in Kentucky.
	...

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