[2] As a young adult, Smith occasionally attended mass at St. Vincent De Paul Church, where she felt drawn.

[7] Through the encouragement of Dominican Friar Pere Aquilani in Berlin, who had become her confessor, she expressed interest in becoming a member of the Sisters of the Cenacle.

Instead, she joined the Dominican Congregation of Our Lady of the Rosary, founded by two Englishwomen, Alice Mary and Lucy Thorpe, who had entered Catholicism from the Anglican Church.

There she met a priest who introduced her to Francis McNeirny, Bishop of Albany, who approved her idea of founding a Dominican community in Glens Falls.

However, neither the Bishop nor the Cuban government would pay for the children's care, so the sisters begged for support, just as they had done to found their congregation.

Saint Katharine Drexel, the wealthy Philadelphian who later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of their financial sponsors, and they opened a home in 1900.