Eight months pregnant, Emma was scared. She had been staying with a friend but had to leave suddenly. With local shelters full, Emma had nowhere to turn and spent the night under a bridge. Catholic Charities helped find her an apartment through the local housing authority and gave her counseling to assist with the birth of her child.
Emma is one of tens of thousands of women whose lives have been touched by Catholic Charities’ Roselia Program, which provides supportive services for homeless young mothers and their babies.
Few Catholic institutions in our region have a greater legacy of love and charity for women in need. Established in 19th century Pittsburgh, Roselia gave compassionate care to more than 27,000 mothers and their infants during its first 80 years of existence.
Today, the Roselia Program provides an array of services for pregnant women and new mothers, enrolling them in a Team HOPE program that offers workshops on life skills, parenting education, counseling and employment assistance, as well as providing supportive counseling and much-needed baby items.
Our Campaign for The Church Alive! will establish a $2.5 million Roselia Program Endowment Fund, providing about $125,000 annually for services and classes in order to help single moms find greater stability in their lives.
Last year, the pregnancy and parenting program helped nearly 1,900 women in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Greene, Lawrence, and Washington counties.
“When we talk to our moms, we find they don’t know how to dream for themselves and their children,” said Susan Rauscher, executive director of Catholic Charities. “It’s important that they see their own worth and dignity. That’s the Church’s unwavering commitment—to help address the root causes of their needs and be willing to walk side-by-side with them until they’re strong enough to parent on their own.”
This pro-life outreach of the Church recently served women through a residential program in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. The Roselia Program is now run from Catholic Charities’ administration building downtown while a committee of board directors, staff and community leaders consider residential sites for a new Roselia Center.
Times changed, needs didn’t
In 1891, during a time of extreme poverty, the Sisters of Charity began a ministry for unwed mothers and their babies. They opened the Roselia Foundling Asylum and Maternity Hospital in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in a large house donated by Charles Donnelly and named for his late wife, Roselia. It was a secret place where a new baby could be cared for. Pregnant women were taken in as well, preventing suicide as well as infanticide.
Doctors from Mercy Hospital delivered babies in the maternity ward; Roselia later added a full-time medical staff, nursing school, dental clinic and social work practice. When the hospital closed in 1971, Catholic Charities assumed management of the program and moved it to Oakland.
At first, most infants either went home with their mothers or to a relative’s home. After Pennsylvania formalized adoption procedures in the 1940s, there was a new demand for babies and most of those born at Roselia were adopted. For the last three decades there have been fewer adoptions as some women view that decision as abandonment.
Through the years, the name would become Roselia Center; the population served would change from teens to homeless women; and the services shifted from health care to supportive care that included a safe, nurturing residence, counseling, and parenting and life skills education.
“We see this as an essential ministry that requires our efforts to grow it in order to address the prevailing problem of homelessness for pregnant and parenting moms,” Rauscher said.
Sister Bonaventure, who ran the center in the 1960s, said later that she received many letters from girls after they left Roselia. They told her that she was the only person who accepted them for who they were, and thanked her for not judging them.
That heritage remains the heart of Roselia.
