Did Adele Brise belong to a religious community?

While she was called 'Sister,' Brise was actually member of secular third order

While they were known as the Sisters of Good Help, were addressed as "Sister" and wore a modified habit, these women were not a religious community. They were instead a secular third order: non-vowed lay women who had chosen to live together, following, by most accounts, the Franciscan way of life.

(Adele called the Chapel, La Chapelle. The words Notre Dame de bon Secours, priez pour nous — "Our Lady of Good Help, pray for us" — were inscribed above the door of the 1861 chapel. Some translated secours as "health" and called the women the "Sisters of Good Health.)

In 1867, the women opened a school alongside the chapel. Two years later, they were advertising their boarding school, "St. Mary's Academy." They soon had many students, some of whom were orphans.

"Sister" Adele never took vows in a religious community, though some of her companions later did. The final two members of her group — Celina Londo and Cecilia Frisque — joined the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross at Bay Settlement in 1903.

The Bay Settlement Sisters took responsibility for the chapel and its school in 1902. They did so six years after Adele's death, at the request of Bishop Sebastian Messmer. They served there until 1992.

"Sr." Adele and her companions lived as a third order community. Third orders, sometimes called tertiaries, are lay people linked to a specific religious order, such as the Franciscans or Dominicans. When discussing religious communities, those in the "first order" are priests; "second order" are those who are cloistered; and "third order" members live "in the world."

More details at The Compass

She's still Sister Adele to me.