The next year, when cholera struck the city, the Sisters volunteered to nurse the sick poor. Mother Catherine sought out abandoned, immigrant children as they arrived at the Louisville wharf and gathered them into their own small house behind the church. Twenty-five children moved from there to the house that Mother Catherine and the women of Louisville raised money to build. Within three years, river boats and urban disease had brought enough orphans to require purchase of a large building, the St. Vincent Orphanage that lasted Mother Catherine's lifetime. It had a long wing in which she could complete the triad of services by opening St. Vincent Infirmary.