Bayley's mission for the fledgling Diocese was to establish Catholic education, as he said: "In our present position, the schoolhouse has become second in importance to the House of God itself. ... ambition is to have every Catholic child in the state in a Catholic school." Bayley realized that in order to be effective in his mission he needed the help of a Diocesan community; as he put it, "no one can fill that most important office so effectually as religious women." In 1857 a group of Benedictine Sisters arrived from Pennsylvania and in the following year, Bayley sent five women to train with the Sisters of Charity. Many other communities of religious men and women joined the Diocese in the next decades.