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Born in Philadelphia in 1809, Cornelia was the youngest child in her family. She grew to become an attractive and gifted young woman, marrying Pierce Connelly, a dashing young clergyman at the local Episcopalian church, on December 1st, 1831.
In the early years of their marriage Cornelia and Pierce were blissfully happy. Pierce became the rector of Trinity Church in Natchez. Their first two children, Mercer and Adelaide, were born. But less than four years after their wedding, Pierce renounced his Anglican orders and took his family to Rome. Before they set sail from New Orleans, Cornelia was received into the Catholic Church; Pierce waited until they reached Rome.
While in Europe, a third baby, John Henry, was born. Then, serious financial losses forced the Connellys to return to America to work with Catholic missionaries in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Cornelia provided the family income by teaching guitar and giving singing lessons in the Sacred Heart convent school. Cornelia and Pierce continued to develop and sustain their life of prayer. The couple had a fourth baby, Mary Magdalene, in July 1839, who, sadly, died in September. The following February, toddler John Henry was knocked into a vat of boiling sugar by a big Newfoundland dog. He suffered multiple burns and died.
In October of 1840 another heartbreak came: Pierce told Cornelia he felt called to the priesthood. Pregnant with their fifth child, Cornelia urged her husband to reconsider this proposal, but added characteristically that if God asked it of her, she would make the sacrifice – and with all her heart.
Gradually Cornelia discovered her own vocation to be a Religious. In 1845 Pierce was ordained in Rome. Cornelia went with two of her children to stay with the sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart in Rome. God did not seem to be calling her to join the Society, yet she could not yet discern her path. Cornelia prayed to know God's desires for her. These were made clear in a request from Pope Gregory XVI that she go to England to found a congregation which would educate Catholic girls. By October 1846 Cornelia found herself with three inexperienced companions in a vast convent in Derby.
In Derby, Cornelia and her companions set to work immediately providing basic education for the girls who worked in the silk mills and factories which surrounded the convent. Two years later, Cornelia moved her community to St. Leonards-on-Sea, where the work and spirituality of the young Society was consolidated. The sisters not only ran boarding and day schools, but they established a teacher training college and were involved in writing books, translating, painting, producing and publishing religious art and literature, giving retreats and instructing converts.
As her Society grew and her work in education flourished, great personal suffering came again to Cornelia through Pierce. He renounced both his priesthood and his Catholic faith, removed their three children from the schools they were attending and denied Cornelia all contact with them, hoping thus to force her to return to him as his wife. He even pressed a lawsuit against her that gained notoriety in England, but he eventually lost the case.
Through this suffering, Cornelia clung steadfastly to God, her strength. She wrote in her notebook, "I belong all to God," and this total belonging freed her to give herself to others. Her love for God grew and she sought joyfully to live her life as one continuous act of love. In 1992, the Catholic Church recognized Cornelia’s contributions and proclaimed her Venerable.
(Text courtesy of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and excerpted from One Woman’s Journey in Faith.)
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