In 2013, the Marian Library received the papers of the late John S. Stokes Jr., co-founder of Mary’s Gardens, a Philadelphia organization that taught and encouraged the planting of devotional gardens in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mother. Active in civil rights and social justice movements, he was the director of the Wellsprings Ecumenical Center in Philadelphia. He died in 2007.

Among his papers was a collection of promotional brochures from a variety of religious orders. The University of Dayton Libraries have digitized them and made many of them available in eCommons, the University’s open-access institutional repository. In observance of the World Day for Consecrated Life (Feb. 2, 2016), here are some highlights.