Oblate Sisters of Providence

Oblate Sisters of Providence
AbbreviationOSP
Formation2 July 1829; 195 years ago (1829-07-02)
FounderMother Mary Lange
Founded atBaltimore
TypeCatholic religious order
Superior General
Sister Rita Michelle Proctor, OSP
AffiliationsCatholic Church
Websiteoblatesisters.com

The Oblate Sisters of Providence (OSP) is a Catholic women's religious institute founded by Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, and Father James Nicholas Joubert in 1829 in Baltimore, Maryland for the education of girls of African descent. It was the first permanent community of Black Catholic sisters in the United States.

The Oblate Sisters were free women of color who served to provide Baltimore's African-American population with education and "a corps of teachers from its own ranks."[1] The congregation is a member of the Women of Providence in Collaboration.

  1. ^ Diane Batts Morrow, "'Our Convent': The Oblate Sisters of Providence and Baltimore's Antebellum Black Community," in Janet L. Coryell, et al., eds., Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood: Dealing with the Powers That Be (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 27.