Welcome to our page on the MdeC Archive Project. Founded in 1848, Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy was a Catholic girls’ school located “high upon a slope majestic” in Wheeling, WV. In 2008, her doors were closed forever. Though efforts to save the Mount’s main building failed in 2011, her spirit remains strong among those who knew and loved her. Her stories are hidden in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston Archives and this project serves to share those stories and keep her memory alive.
On May 10, 1940, at 4 a.m., our monastery was suddenly bombed. We were able to get into the cellar without meeting any accidents. At 7 a.m. a solider came to show us a bloody bone, saying: “This your Chaplain’s skull,” and then he asked us if any of us had been wounded. Towards 11 a.m., another solder brought us the sacred Ciborium, saying: “You have no longer any Tabernacle.”
CARE was recognized by all European countries, and its food packages reached their destination without serious damage. Monasteries in countries that were in “enemy territory” were included. Our collection of their letters of gratitude is touching, even in these late years of the 20th Century.
“How can we express in words all they had been obliged to suffer from fright and anxiety, from artillery fire, from pillage and expulsion?”
