Bethune, Ade, 1914-2002

Biography

A gifted and skilled liturgical artist, art director, and social justice advocate, Ade Bethune arrived in Newport in the late 1930s, where she remained until her death in 2002.

Born in Schaerbeek, Belgium, a daughter of the Gaston and Marthe de Bethune, she immigrated to New York in 1928.

She was a sculptor, painter, mosaic artist, wood carver, and jewelry and metal worker, and her approach to sacred art was considered transformative. In Bethune’s drawings, she depicted ordinary, working class people caring for others, such as nursing the sick or feeding the hungry.

From 1933 to 1938, she was closely associated with Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker movement, and she designed the masthead and provided the illustrations for the Catholic Worker. In 1936, she began working with Newport artist John Howard Benson. She also taught art at the Portsmouth Priory (now Abbey) School.

In the 1940s, she set up the St. Leo Shop on Thames Street, establishing herself as a liturgical artist and consultant in church architecture, and during the 1960s, she served as art director of the Terra Sancta Guild of Broomall, Pa., producing church furnishings, liturgical objects, memorial cards and religious objects for home use.

Bethune worked to establish affordable housing for the poor and the elderly. She founded the Church Community Housing Corporation in Newport in 1969, and designed the prototype house for the corporation's building program. She oversaw construction of many of these units throughout Newport County.

In 1991, she founded Star of the Sea, a nonprofit corporation, to provide living quarters for the elderly, which led to the conversion of a convent on Washington Street to its present day apartments, known as Harbor House.