Sisters of St. Joseph
In 1902 nine Sisters of St. Joseph from the mother-house at Le Puy took charge of the school in the French parish of St-Roch, Fall River, Massachusetts. The accession of other members from the mother-house enabled the community to take charge of three other schools in the city attached to French parishes. In 1906 St. Theresa's Convent was formally opened as the provincial house of the community, which was legally incorporated in the same year, and a novitiate was established. In the mid 1970s, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Fall River merged with the Springfield Congregation.
Fall River, Massachusetts
Fall River remains a predominantly Roman Catholic city and is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River, located at St. Mary's Cathedral on Second Street, formed in the 1850s by Irish immigrants. Also on Columbia Street is located Santo Christo Parish known as the Mother Church of the Portuguese Parishes in the Fall River Diocese. The Church was Established in 1892 to serve the local Portuguese community that Immigrated predominately from the São Miguel Island of Azores. Other imposing Catholic churches include St. Anne's Church at the top of Kennedy Park, Good Shepherd Church (formerly Saint Patrick's) in the South End, and the former Notre Dame de Lourdes in the Flint neighborhood, which was destroyed in a spectacular blaze on May 10, 1982. At the time of the city's peak population in 1920, there were over two dozen Catholic parishes existing throughout the city, with each ethnic enclave having its own parish. In recent years, the diocese has merged several parishes in the city, closing some, and renaming the united congregations, bringing the total number of parishes in the diocese to fifteen as of 2013.