Visitation in Service to Others Through Responsive Youth

The seed of VISTORY was planted by the Visitation Sisters in 1998 at Mt. de Chantal Visitation Academy in Wheeling, WV, to honor a number of monastic anniversaries and has bloomed ever since. The Sisters desired the anniversaries to not just be a “pat on the back,” but rather an opportunity to give back in service to the communities that their monasteries and schools called home. For more than 25 years the Sisters, together with the VSN, have cultivated VISTORY to be a witness to the transformative power of God’s compassionate love at work in the world – to Live Jesus!

Each summer, VISTORY invites our high school students to forge bonds of friendship between themselves and the people they encounter during an immersive week of sisterhood, Salesian Spirituality, and service in the host city, home to one of our VSN schools. One of the four year rotations of service is held in Camden, NJ, at DeSales Service Works in collaboration with the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales.

In June 2025, a dozen students from each VSN school will be instruments of God’s abiding love in service to the Twin Cities. In addition to staying on the Vis campus, praying together, sharing meals, and a sisterhood outing in the city, they will have the gift of spending time with the Visitation Sisters in Minneapolis and their neighbors.

Our students – and adult chaperones – always come back and tell us that VISTORY was a life-changing opportunity to grow in knowledge, compassion, and confidence to address societal inequities that burden many of our brothers and sisters. Participants also gain an intimate understanding of their life-long responsibility to help alleviate the sufferings of those whose human dignity is denied in the context of faith and our shared Salesian Spirituality. 

VISTORY is a vibrant response to St. Jane’s call: “Let us be great-souled women of faith, holding nothing back from ourselves, and giving everything over to God and the people we serve!”