13 Facts About Catherine Doherty

Catherine de Hueck Doherty was a Russian-born Catholic activist who founded the Madonna House Apostolate in 1947.

Catherine Doherty was a pioneer in the struggle for interracial justice, spiritual writer, lecturer, and spiritual mother to priests and laity.

Catherine Doherty was born in Russia to wealthy parents and came to Canada after escaping the Russian Revolution.

Shortly before the turn of the century, Catherine Doherty was born in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, to Theodore and Emma Kolyschkine.

Catherine Doherty spent much of her childhood in countries where her father, a successful international insurance agent, had been posted.

The family returned to St Petersburg in 1910, and two years later, at the age of 15, Catherine Doherty married her first cousin, Baron Boris de Hueck.

At the outbreak of World War I, Catherine Doherty served as a nurse at the front, experiencing firsthand the horrors of war.

Later that year, in London, Catherine Doherty was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

The couple immigrated to Toronto, where Catherine Doherty gave birth to a son, George.

Catherine Doherty begged food and clothing, organized activities for the youth, and countered Communist propaganda with the social encyclicals of the popes.

John Lafarge SJ, Catherine Doherty initiated an interracial apostolate in Harlem, New York, living with and serving the African-American population.

On June 25,1943, Catherine married Eddie Doherty, a well-known Irish-American newspaperman and writer.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty died in Combermere on December 14,1985, at the age of 89.