Canoness

[1] The involvement of women in the work of the Church goes back to the earliest time, and their uniting together for community exercises was a natural development of religious worship.

It was written in the year 423 and was addressed to Felicitas, Superioress of the Monastery of Hippo, and to Rusticus, the priest whom Augustine had appointed to have charge of the nuns.

[3] Towards the close of the 8th century, the title of canoness is found for the first time, and it was given to these communities of women who, while they professed a common life, yet did not carry out to its full extent the original Rule of St. Augustine.

These canonesses were practically an imitation of the chapters of canons regular which had then recently been received through the introduction of the Regula vitæ communis of St. Chrodegang of Metz.

Driven from France, some took refuge in England, like those of the famous convent of Les Oiseaux, Paris, who moved to Westgate-on-Sea, and those of Versailles who settled in Hull.

In a similar manner, in 1897, the Canonesses of St. Augustine in Belgium answered the request of a missionary priest in Mulagumudu, India, for help with an orphanage he ran there.

In 1963, however, inspired by the Scheut Fathers with whom they frequently worked and from whom they received much spiritual support, the congregation chose to drop its monastic element, and transformed itself into the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

As with the canons so also among the canonesses, commitment to liturgical prayer, discipline and love of community life at first flourished but then languished, so that in the tenth and eleventh centuries several monasteries became secular and, though living in the same house, no longer observed the spirit of poverty or kept a common table.

They have the same obligation to the Divine Office as do the canons, and like them, the distinctive part of their religious habit is the white, linen rochet over the traditional black tunic.

In 2010, the Sisters in Jesus the Lord, Canonissae in Jesu Domino (CJD), were established as a Public Association of the Faithful by Bishop Robert Finn in the Diocese of Kansas City–Saint Joseph, Missouri.

They are based in Kansas City, Missouri, and have a house in Vladivostok, Russia, where they serve Roman Catholics at Most Holy Mother of God parish.

In January 2011, the association was recognized as an autonomous priory of the Canonesses Regular of Premontre by the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, the abbot-general and his council of the Norbertine Order and the Diocese of Fresno, California.