The Ursuline Sisters of the Immaculate Conception
of Louisville, Kentucky

In 1858, Bishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville sent the pastor of St. Martin Church to Germany to find sisters to teach children of German immigrants. Three Ursuline Sisters arrived in Louisville that same year and in two weeks began teaching at St. Martin School. The following year, the Sisters opened Ursuline Academy, a day and boarding school for girls, located at the corner of Shelby and Chestnut streets.

More than a century later, on June 26, 1990, Ursuline Campus Schools, Inc. became a separate corporation sponsored by the Ursuline Sisters. The new corporation includes Sacred Heart Academy, Sacred Heart Model School, Ursuline Child Development Center, Ursuline Montessori School and the Ursuline School for the Performing Arts.

In addition to their educational ministry, the sisters work in diocesan offices, as hospital chaplains, in specialized ministries and with the poor in several rural areas. Many of the sisters continue to live in the Motherhouse on Lexington Road in Louisville -- the remainder serve in a number of other states in the U.S., and in Peru, South America.

For over 140 years, the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville have held their place responding in each period to the demands of the times the way St. Angela counseled them. Their contemporary efforts to renew themselves and their entire congregation affirm their intentions to continue to be a vital part of the teaching mission of the Church.