Is there anything nuns can’t do?
Six Dominican “foundress” nuns stepped off a flat-bottom boat on a freezing New Year’s Eve in 1851 to start St. Agnes Academy, the oldest continuously operating school in West Tennessee.
On Friday, the spirit of their service and faith was chiseled in every detail of the school’s 160th anniversary celebration, including a Mass that echoed their Catholic and feminine commitment to a city that was later besieged by Civil War and yellow fever.
“They were the first to establish an orphanage in 1852; it was in the attic of the school,” said Sister Marina Gibbons, president of St. Agnes from 1980 to 1995 and one of several nuns who made the trip to Memphis for the celebration from their Dominican base in St. Catharine, Ky.
Apparently not. Get the full story at The Commercial Appeal.