section_path: Industrial age/Social teachings/Role of women's institutes
section_name: Role of women's institutes
paragraph_text: Role of women's institutes
  
  Catholic women have played a prominent role in providing education and health services in keeping with Catholic social teaching. Ancient orders like the Carmelites had engaged in social work for centuries. The 19th century saw a new flowering of institutes for women, dedicated to the provision of health and education services – of these the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, Claretian Sisters and Franciscan Missionaries of Mary became among the largest Catholic women's religious institutes of all.
  
  The Sisters of Mercy was founded by Catherine McAuley in Ireland in 1831, and her nuns went on to establish hospitals and schools across the world. The Little Sisters of the Poor was founded in the mid-19th century by Saint Jeanne Jugan near Rennes, France, to care for the many impoverished elderly who lined the streets of French towns and cities. In Britain's Australian colonies, Australia's first canonized Saint, Mary MacKillop, co-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart as an educative religious institute for the poor in 1866, going on to establish schools, orphanages and refuges for the needy. In 1872, the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco (also called Daughters of Mary Help of Christians) was founded by Maria Domenica Mazzarello. The teaching order was to become the modern world's largest institute for women, with around 14,000 members in 2012. Saint Marianne Cope opened and operated some of the first general hospitals in the United States, instituting cleanliness standards which influenced the development of America's modern hospital system. Also in the United States, Saint Katharine Drexel founded Xavier University of Louisiana to assist African and Native Americans.