Sweet Alice Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris and meals to families around the world, including her husband William H. Harris, who has multiple sclerosis.
Sister Mary Ruth of the Poor, Mother of the Faith, Mother of the Home: We’re not just the mommies with a kid in a basket…we’re the sisters with a basket of our own!
“Sister Mary Ruth of the Poor” was on Mother’s Day.
Mary Ruth Harris was one of the first African-Americans to be ordained a Catholic nun. She became the first African-American woman ordained a Dominican nun under the leadership of Mother Superior Gertrude Mary, and was named Mother Superior of the Order of Saint Dominic. Sister Ruth was known as a fierce advocate for the rights of those who lived in extreme poverty. With the assistance of her brother, Thomas Harris, she founded the first Catholic Mission to Africa in the South Bronx in the 1930s.
The Order of Saint Dominic was established in 1832. Originally, the Sisters of the Order of Saint Joseph were to be sent to Europe on a one-year mission, but the order of which Mary Ruth became a member, grew to become the largest order of nuns in the world.
The Order of Saint Dominic began with the first African-American woman in the order, Sister Mary Jane Ann Gervas of St. Joseph’s Sisters in Philadelphia. She was the first African-American woman in the Society of Jesus. In 1872 Mary Jane Ann Gervas had a vision that the children of slavery would be set free and that the Order of Saint Dominic would be sent to Africa to find them. The order continued to expand and was renamed the Missionary and Charity Order of Dominicans on February 10, 1906.
According to Sister Ruth, Mother Gertrude Mary told her that she would have to be a “consecrated nun” in order to become a member of the order.
Mother Ruth Harris, who was a devout Catholic and the first African-American nun to be ordained as a Dominican nun, served as Mother Superior for twenty years. She had been the first African-American woman in the