Ade Bethune (January 12, 1914 – May 1, 2002) was an American

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

liturgical artist. She was associated with the

Catholic Worker Movement The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities of Catholics and their associates founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the United States in 1933. Its aim is to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus ...

, and designed an early masthead of its publication, the ''

Catholic Worker ''Catholic Worker'' is a newspaper published seven times a year by the flagship Catholic Worker community in New York City. The newspaper was started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin to make people aware of church teaching on social justice. Hist ...

'', first used in 1935. She later re-designed this in 1985, replacing one of the men with a woman. Bethune was an advocate of traditional

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

. She is buried at Portsmouth Abbey,

Portsmouth, Rhode Island Portsmouth is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 17,871 at the 2020 U.S. census. Portsmouth is the second-oldest municipality in Rhode Island, after Providence; it was one of the four colonies which merged ...

. She was she was inducted into the

Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame The Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame was established in the State of Rhode Island in 1965. Its mission statement states that the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame "exists to honor and recognize, and to extol and publicize the achievements of th ...

in 1990.

Early life

Born

Baroness Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often Hereditary title, hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher th ...

Adélaide de Bethune to a noble Belgian family, her parents were Gaston and Marthe Terlinden. She emigrated with the family after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Her mother Marthe was daughter of

Viscount A viscount ( , for male) or viscountess (, for female) is a title used in certain European countries for a noble of varying status. In many countries a viscount, and its historical equivalents, was a non-hereditary, administrative or judicial ...

Terlinden.

Career beginnings

She volunteered her illustrations to improve the quality of the ''

'' when she was a nineteen-year-old art student, impressed with the work of

Dorothy Day Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic without abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known ...

. This was preparation for her later illustration for Catholic liturgical works such as ''My Sunday Missal'' in 1937, and similar works such as ''My Lenten Missal''. De Bethune also worked closely with Graham Carey and with the

Catholic Art Association The Catholic Art Association (CAA) was founded in 1937 by Sister Esther Newport as an organization of artists, art educators and others interested in Catholic art and its philosophy. The CAA published the '' Catholic Art Quarterly'', sponsored an ...

, founded in 1937 by Sister Esther Newport.

Terra Sancta Guild

Beginning in the 1960s, she was the artistic director of the Terra Sancta Guild, a commercial firm that produced religious art works for many Christian denominations.

Social activism

Ade was interested in the

's work with hospitality for the poor when she was an art student. She continued this interest throughout her life, and became interested in the issue of providing housing for the elderly, particularly the poor elderly. In 1969, she founded the Church Community Housing Corporation in

Newport County, Rhode Island Newport County is one of five counties located in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. As of the 2020 census, the population was 85,643. It is also one of the seven regions of Rhode Island. The county was created in 1703. Like all of the counties in ...

, to design and build housing. In 1991 she founded Star of the Sea to renovate a former

Carmelite , image = , caption = Coat of arms of the Carmelites , abbreviation = OCarm , formation = Late 12th century , founder = Early hermits of Mount Carmel , founding_location = Mount Car ...

convent into an

intentional community An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, ...

and state of the art housing for the elderly, where she lived until her death in 2002.

Artistic works

* Crucifix, St. Paulinus Parish,

Clairton, Pennsylvania Clairton is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. It is located along the Monongahela River and is part of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area. The population was 6,181 at the 2020 census. Under Pennsylvania legal classifications for local g ...

* Design of St. Leo Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, including revival of a central altar * Altar chapel and stained glass

oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...

at the

Chapel + Cultural Center at Rensselaer The Chapel + Cultural Center at Rensselaer is an architecturally unique, multipurpose performing arts and spiritual space in Troy, New York. The Center is owned and operated by the Rensselaer Newman Foundation (RNF). It is conventionally referred ...

* Mosaic wall of the Baptistery, Church of the Angry Christ, Victorias City, Philippines * Mosaic murals and lacquer tabernacle in collaboration with the Czech architect

Antonin Raymond Antonin Raymond (or cs, Antonín Raymond), born as Antonín Reimann (10 May 1888 – 25 October 1976)"Deaths Elsewhere", ''Miami Herald'', 30 October 1976, p. 10 was a Czech American architect. Raymond was born and studied in Bohemia (now part ...

, and Filipino American artist, Alfonso Ossorio, Chapel of Saint Joseph the Worker,

Negros Island Negros is the fourth largest and third most populous island in the Philippines, with a total land area of . Negros is one of the many islands of the Visayas, in the central part of the country. The predominant inhabitants of the island region a ...

, Philippines

Biography

* Judith Stoughton: ''Proud Donkey of Schaerbeek: Ade Bethune, Catholic Worker Artist''

St. Cloud, Minnesota St. Cloud is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the largest population center in the state's central region. The population was 68,881 at the 2020 census, making it Minnesota's 12th-largest city. St. Cloud is the county seat of Stear ...

, North Star Press of St. Cloud, 1988
On-line short biography
* James A. Meroll

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080514015735/http://www.catholicworker.org/bethune.htm Information from the ''Catholic Worker''

Sources

The Ade Bethune Collection
* ''The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day''; illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg; introduction by Daniel Berrigan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bethune, Ade Cooper Union alumni Catholic Workers Belgian emigrants to the United States American draughtsmen Artists from Rhode Island Roman Catholic activists People from Schaerbeek 1914 births 2002 deaths Burials in Rhode Island