New York City street honors foundress of Hawthorne Dominicans

The City of New York honored the foundress of the Dominican Sisters of HawthorneOct. 1 by co-naming a city street after her in recognition of her care for people with incurable cancer.

The city designated a section of East 68th Street in Manhattan between First and York avenues as “Rose Hawthorne Way,” Independent Catholic News reported Nov. 1, citing the Dominican Order. The dedication marked 130 years since Venerable Rose Hawthorne welcomed her first patient into her home, the report noted.

This year also marks the centenary of her death. Mother Marie Edward, the congregation’s superior general, welcomed the tribute to Sister Hawthorne.

“It is a tribute to her total dedication to the sick poor,” she said. “We thank you for this honor for our foundress. Her work continues 130 years after she began.”

Pope Francis recognized Sister Hawthorne’s heroic virtues in March 2024, granting her the title Venerable, as Zeale News previously reported. The daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, she entered the Catholic Church in 1891 and later became Mother Mary Alphonsa, founding the Congregation of St. Rose of Lima, also known as the Hawthorne Dominicans.

Today, the sisters provide free nursing care to people with incurable cancer at homes including Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, New York. 

The sisters’ care for the sick is part of a broader Dominican ministry along the newly co-named street, home to St. Catherine of Siena Church and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, whose patients receive spiritual care from Dominican friars.

Brother Hyacinth Grubb placed the dedication within the Dominican Family’s long history of caring for the sick in Manhattan, according to the report.

“Dominican friars have cared for the spiritual needs of the sick as hospital chaplains in Manhattan for almost a century,” he said. “Healthcare ministry, whether in the direct care of patients and their families, support for medical staff, or as a centre of Thomistic bioethics, is a powerful opportunity to preach the Gospel in the public square.”

The recognition comes amid the sisters’ legal challenge to New York requirements for care facilities that they say conflict with Catholic teaching, including rules on preferred pronouns, room assignments and restroom access based on residents’ “gender identity,” and accommodation of extramarital sexual activity, as Zeale News previously reported.

Mother Marie Edward also recalled the conviction that moved Sister Hawthorne to begin caring for people with cancer, quoting her words from 1896.

“A fire was then lighted in my heart, where it still burns. I set my whole being to endeavour to bring consolation to the cancerous poor.”