Cordi-Marian Nuns

The Cordi-Marian Nuns fled anti-Catholic persecution in Mexico in the late 1920s traveling to Chicago where they served Mexican immigrants in Packingtown, South Chicago and the Near West Side. The Cordi-Marian Settlement included a nursery and day-care center and offered classes and recreational activities for children and adults for six decades, all the way through the late 1980’s.

Why this stop? Walk a few blocks west of the Red Line47th Street station and you’ll be in Packingtown, the home of Chicago’s Union Stockyards which was described in detail by Upton Sinclair in his book, The Jungle. This neighborhood was also home to many poor Mexican immigrants who worked in dismal conditions at the Stockyards and who were ministered to by the Cordi-Marian nuns.

Photo—Mother Carmen Serrano y Rugama, Founder of the Order