March 10 — What role did religion play in your family? How did your female ancestors practice their faith? If they did not, why didn’t they? Did you have any female ancestors who served their churches in some capacity?

[Note: This post originally ran during the Fearless Females series in March 2010]

Both of my grandmothers had a deep faith in God. Both were baptized in the Greek Catholic rite. After coming to America, my dad’s mother married in the Greek Catholic church but then followed her husband to the Roman Catholic church. My maternal grandmother attending the Greek Catholic church in America but then switched to Russian Orthodox. By doing so, she was then able to continue to observe Christmas on January 7th.

My dad’s sister (my “Auntie”–who kept the scrapbook I wrote about in my March 8th post) was a Roman Catholic nun–she spent most of her adult life in a convent in Victoria, Texas. Our family always looked forward to her visits–usually at Christmas and for a few weeks in the summer. Here is a photograph of her once she took the name of Sr. M. Camilla.

Copyright, 2012, Lisa A. Alzo

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