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Gail McNeil of St. Gabriel's parish in Rotterdam says it's her mission to shine a light on the achievements of U.S. women religious - through dolls.

Over the past 13 years, Mrs. McNeil has collected two dozen dolls in traditional religious habits from a now-defunct company called Blessings. She had spotted an ad for them in a Catholic magazine.

A native of Batavia, N.Y., Mrs. McNeil attended schools staffed by women religious, including the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester at Nazareth College in Rochester.

"I always admired what they did," she said. "They never really got credit for it."

Mrs. McNeil is a retired history teacher. Her first doll, a Sister of Mercy, triggered her to begin researching sisters.

"The more I delved into the history of these communities," Mrs. McNeil said, "the more intrigued I became. Each of these communities has their own charism, their own special works. These women took on tasks that no one else wanted."

She discovered, for instance, that the Sisters of the Holy Cross became the basis for the Navy Nurse Corps in 1908. They had treated patients aboard the Navy's first commissioned hospital ship during the Civil War.

"People need to know what these women did," she said. "It's something that needs to be put out there."

The dolls' handmade religious habits show the evolution of the sisters' garb. The doll for the Sisters of the Presentation - which, like the other dolls, wears the order's original style of habit - has elicited memories for former residents of St. Colman's Home in Watervliet.

"They look at these and say, 'Oh, my goodness: That's what Sister So-and-So wore,'" Mrs. McNeil said.

The collector has displayed her dolls at Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons School in Schenectady and at meetings of St. Gabriel's women's club. She's willing to exhibit them elsewhere in the Diocese.

Even the cheapest of the dolls cost nearly $160; family members often give them to Mrs. McNeil as gifts. She keeps them in a "prayer room/guest room."

The dolls' presence was a little too real for her granddaughter, who once turned the dolls toward the wall before sleeping in the room, but "I feel I'm in the presence of very special women," Mrs. McNeil said. "You're immediately struck by [their] beauty."

The collector, who has three children and eight grandchildren, is a pastoral council member, eucharistic minister and catechist at St. Gabriel's. She also volunteers as a pastoral care minister at Glendale nursing home in Scotia.

Mrs. McNeil said that laywomen, in addition to women religious, need more encouragement to be active in their faith: "Without the service of women, the Church would collapse. We have a lot to give to the Church and to the world."[[In-content Ad]]

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