Elizabeth Prout, also known as Mother Mary Joseph of Jesus, (2 September 1820 – 11 January 1864) was the founder of the religious congregation of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion.
Early life
Elizabeth Prout was born in Coleham, Shrewsbury, England on 2 September 1820. Little is known of her early life, save that she was born to an Anglican mother and a father who was a lapsed Catholic. Elizabeth was baptised and brought up in the Anglican tradition. Her parents relocated the family to seek work at Stone, Staffordshire, where her father worked as a journeyman cooper in Joule’s Brewery. In her early twenties she converted to Catholicism under the influence of the Passionist missionary to England, Dominic Barberi, as well as another Passionist, Father Gaudentius Rossi. Her conversion was met with great negativity by her parents (both of whom were later converted to Catholicism). Prout began to feel a strong attraction to the religious life and Rossi advised her to join the Sisters of the Infant Jesus in Northampton. In 1848 Prout joined this community where she initially found great happiness. Her health however was poor, and the sisters did not think her strong enough for their work. After spending some time with her parents, Prout again appealed to Rossi for advice. At that time the Passionist was giving a parish mission at St Chad’s in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, and it was there that Rossi advised Prout to make her home, teaching in the parish school.
Work in Manchester
On arriving in Manchester, Prout was met with the squalid conditions that the people lived in. She soon established herself in the parish by visiting the sick and poor in some of the poorest areas of Manchester, teaching workers in the cotton mills and Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine.
Touched by the misery and deprivation of the poor, she and a few companions came together to form a community to help the voiceless downtrodden workers in the large industrial towns of nineteenth-century England.
Prout felt that she wanted to establish a more regular life for her and her companions and thought first of joining an existing religious institute, but then, with the advice of Rossi, believed she was called to found a new congregation. A house was secured in Stocks Street, behind St. Chad's church and there Elizabeth and her companions lived and worked, providing educational opportunities and skills for women which would enable them to seek better work.
The life of Prout and her female companions was strict, and they laboured for much of the day in prayer and working for the local poor. The life proved so strict that eventually all of Prout's companions left her. New recruits came and a rule of life was drawn up by Rossi. The company was called the Institute of the Holy Family. Prout and the sisters received a religious habit at the hands of Father Croskell, parish priest of St. Chad's, on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary, 21 November 1852. A plaque in the Lady Chapel of St. Chad's records this event. At her clothing Prout received her new religious name, Mother Mary Joseph of Jesus.
The next two years saw the sisters working unceasingly, to such an extent that their health was neglected and many of the sisters fell ill, being too poor to afford the services of a doctor; Prout was called upon to nurse the sisters herself. In 1855 Prout and another Sister moved to Sutton, St Helens. She opened a school at St Mary’s, Blackbrook, and took charge of St Anne’s School, Sutton. The sisters earned their living as best they could; they knew, like the people around them, what poverty was, and at times Prout was forced to beg.
Encouragement was ever present however, in the form of many benefactors and friends, not least amongst them Father Ignatius Spencer, son of Earl Spencer and convert to the Catholic faith. He too had become a Passionist and joined Father Dominic Barberi in his work in England. When Rossi was transferred to the United States by his superiors Spencer took the place of the spiritual guide of Prout and her Institute. By this time a larger home had been found for the community in Levenshulme on the outskirts of Manchester.