Catholic women who got pregnant out of wedlock in Chicago 100 years ago would quietly disappear into the Misericordia Maternity Hospital and Home for Infants on 47th Street to bear their illegitimate babies under the care of the Sisters of Mercy, joined by indigent married women and those “of foreign birth or parentage.”
They often emerged without their infants. Most of the healthy children left behind would eventually be adopted. But those with disabilities became charges of the Archdiocese of Chicago, which warehoused them “out of sight, out of mind” until they turned 6 and could be delivered to the state of Illinois and its notoriously nightmarish mental institutions, where residents were tied to beds and worse.
By 1954, the Home for Infants housed about 50 children with developmental challenges like Down syndrome and cerebral palsy. In 1969, the task of keeping them alive until the state could take over fell to Sister Rosemary Connelly, a 38-year-old nun from the Sisters of Mercy who knew little of Misericordia but immediately realized she had found her calling.
“I felt God’s presence on my very first day at Misericordia,” she said. “I could tell that all the children were loved.”
They were well-dressed then but stayed in bed all day. They ate there. Sister Rosemary decided these were not inert objects that should just be allowed to languish but God’s children, precious souls, each with the spark of humanity, no matter how buried. That flame had to be nourished, physically and spiritually.
She decided she would provide them with the rich and rewarding lives they deserved. Since programming for such children didn’t exist, she created it, in the process becoming the dynamic, irresistible force building Misericordia into the preeminent home in Chicago for children and adults with developmental challenges.
Beloved for the energy, skill, devotion and unwavering faith she brought to Misericordia for more than half a century, Sister Rosemary died June 19 at Misericordia. She was 94.
“Sister Rosemary was the heart and soul of Misericordia for more than 50 years,” said the Rev. Jack Clair, president and executive director of Misericordia. “Her love and guidance helped build a community where hundreds of people with developmental disabilities enjoy living the highest quality of life. Sister’s life was a life of faith dedicated to God’s promise of eternal life.”
“There are few people in the city of Chicago who have done so much for so many as Sister Rosemary,” then-Mayor Richard M. Daley said in 2009 at her 40th anniversary as the head of Misericordia.
“When you think of the number of lives she touched — thousands,” said David Axelrod, who was senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “Not just the folks who lived in Misericordia but their families. It changed my daughter’s life, and it changed my whole family’s life for the better. This whole place exists because of the force of her will.”
Rosemary Connelly was born Feb. 23, 1931, on the West Side, the third child of a pair of immigrants from County Mayo, Ireland: pub owner Peter V. Connelly and Bridget Moran. She joined the Sisters of Mercy when she was 18, served as a psychiatric social worker in Aurora and a school teacher in Chicago before drawing the Misericordia assignment.
Why her? Nobody ever explained.
“I don’t know,” Sister Rosemary said on her 90th birthday in 2021. “That’s been a mystery. They always had a nurse in charge. And I had a master’s degree in social work and one in sociology. Maybe that’s why.’”
She graduated with a degree in social science from St. Xavier University in 1959, received her master’s in sociology from St. Louis University in 1966 and another master’s, in social work ,from Loyola University in 1969.
One of her inspirations was a nephew with disabilities. Her first order of business after being put in charge of Misericordia was to go to Sears for tricycles and wading pools. Then, she opened a dining room so children could eat together, as a community.
Misericordia — the word means “mercy” or “compassion” in Latin — stopped sending children to the state.
“I decided we’d keep them,” she said.
That meant the population grew. By 1976, the Misericordia Home for Special Children was too small.
Meanwhile, the largest Catholic children’s home in the city, the Angel Guardian Orphanage at Devon Avenue and Ridge Road, had closed for lack of state funding and the rise of foster homes. Sister Rosemary saw its possibilities and talked Catholic Charities into putting the 31-acre campus under her control.
On March 29, 1976, 39 children boarded a yellow school bus for the trip from 47th Street to the North Side. This being a Sister Rosemary Connelly operation, the bus stopped on the way at the Lincoln Park Zoo so the children could visit the animals.
“To put these children in a nursing home is unfair,” she said. “We want to help them become caring people. We’re trying to break this whole condescending world in which [developmentally disabled] people live.”
Sister Rosemary inherited an aged campus of cottages in need of repair and exercised two strengths she showed a positive genius for: mobilizing volunteers and raising money.
“She was the best politician in town,” said Axelrod, who was also founding director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. “She knew everybody. You didn’t want to disappoint her.”
“She looked like a sweet, white-haired nun until you realized she was made of structural steel,” said Carol Marin, the former newscaster and former Chicago Sun-Times columnist who is co-director of the DePaul Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence.
When Marin realized that her son Gideon was “never going to be cured,” she went to see Sister Rosemary.
“I was a mess,” Marin said. “She just talked to me. She didn’t have me tour. The next time, she went around.”
Sister Rosemary showed Marin a resident whose mother had kept from interacting with others for years.
“She said: ‘Don’t you be that person. You’re doing it for your son. He needs to have a community. You’re doing this for him and not for yourself.’ She was absolutely right,” Marin said.
Misericordia was not a place where families could park their kids and forget them.
“There is an expectation that all of us to never leave the lives of our children,” Marin said. “I’m the bingo-caller at Family Fest. His dad was a full time volunteer for years and years. Misericordia becomes a second home.”
Misericordia’s lunches and breakfasts were mandatory stops for the powerful and the wealthy — particularly those who had children in Misericordia.
Axelrod’s daughter Lauren is a resident.
“When my daughter was a teenager, we wouldn’t have bet that she’d be alive today,” he said. “We certainly didn’t think she would have as full a life as she does. That would be a miracle, and Misericordia has made that possible.”
Sister Rosemary saw that residents interacted with the real world. The Greenhouse Inn, which Misericordia opened in 1989, wasn’t an exercise in occupational therapy but a functioning full-service restaurant open to the public, perhaps the only one staffed by waiters and cooks with Down syndrome. The Hearts & Flour Bakery not only gave meaningful jobs to 50 residents but also raised money for Misericordia, with an outlet in Glenview and a regular presence at farmer’s markets. Many have received a gift tin of its heart-shaped brownie cookies. About 10,000 mail orders a month are filled.
Misericordia’s original home, dubbed Misericordia South, remained open until 2005, providing care for severely disabled, non-ambulatory residents. Specialized equipment at Misericordia’s main campus made possible advanced therapies, and the buildings had the decor — and cleanliness — of a ritzy North Shore country club or a resort hotel.
Misericordia expanded, built new structures, eventually employing 1,200 staffers for 600 residents, plus another two dozen volunteers a day.
Such an operation hasn’t been without controversy. Families of eligible children could languish for years on the 600-person waiting list. The disability rights movement, plus the terrible reputation of group homes in general, caused some to assail Misericordia for not letting residents live independently in regular neighborhoods. Medicaid funding became harder to get for people with intellectual difficulties in group settings. In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act funneled aid toward community-based homes and away from places like Misericordia.
Sister Rosemary took criticisms to heart and in the 1990s opened the Community Integrated Living Arrangement off-campus, placing residents who could thrive under those circumstances into nearby private homes.
“She saw our kids are people, not as disabilities,” Marin said. “There’s really a difference. She saw them on equal footing with all the rest of us, as human beings. She always said, ‘You don’t give them a life; you give them a life worth living.’ And she did.”
Sister Rosemary received dozens of humanitarian awards and nine honorary doctorates, from the University of Notre Dame, St. Mary’s College of Notre Dame, MacMurray College, Loyola, DePaul, Lewis University, St. Xavier University, Marquette University and Dominican University.
Survivors include her sister Kathryn and many nieces and nephews.
Marin said she was grateful she was able to speak with Sister Rosemary recently.
“I told her, ‘You saved our lives. You saved Gideon’s life, which has been a great life.’ I was so grateful to be able to have a chance to tell her all the miracles she has wrought. To be a saint, you need three documented miracles, She has a thousand more.”
