BROCKTON -- It is a common inside joke among the Catholic Daughters of the Americas that their organization is the best-kept secret in U.S. Catholic life.

The Catholic Daughters is one of the oldest and largest organizations for Catholic women in the Western Hemisphere. Founded in 1903 by members of the Knights of Columbus, it has over 52,000 members in 45 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Mexico.

Yet, despite their shared history, CDA Massachusetts State Regent Cindy Patriarca has met Knights of Columbus who have never heard of the Daughters.

"We're out there, people know us, but very scarcely do they know us," said CDA Massachusetts Second Vice State Regent Alicia Baer. "We're not as well-known as, say, the Knights of Columbus."

Along with Patriarca and Baer, First State Vice Regent MaryGrace DiMartino, State Secretary Cathy Duford, and State Treasurer Jenn Pacheco make up the CDA Massachusetts State Council, overseeing the almost 300 Daughters who make up the state's eight chapters known as courts.

"It came into my heart one day that I wanted to do something for my parish, to have a woman's group that was going to be spiritually developing our own lives and to give back to the community and help our community," said Patriarca, who started the Queen of Peace Court in Foxborough in 2014.

The Daughters' motto is "Unity and Charity." Recently, the Massachusetts courts presented Archbishop Richard G. Henning with $10,000 raised for the Archdiocese of Boston's Pro-Life Office. The money is collected as part of the "Pennies for the Unborn" fundraiser every two years. Archbishop Henning will celebrate a Mass for the Daughters at St. John's Seminary in Brighton in February 2026. The Daughters sponsor pro-life "baby showers," which collect diapers and other baby needs. They also partner with the nonprofit Unbound, which allows sponsors to symbolically "adopt" children living in poverty by sending them a monthly stipend. The CDA has been sponsoring a Colombian boy named Nicolas since he was a toddler. He is now 17 years old.

"It gave me another outlet to help with charity, work in the community, and become aware of many situations that needed our help," said DiMartino, who joined the Daughters in 2014.

Nationwide, the Daughters pray for each other when someone is sick or experiencing a crisis.

"Many, many wonderful prayers have been answered," Patriarca said.

Pacheco joined the Daughters in 2012 after the death of her mother. One of her fellow parishioners at St. Stephen Parish in Framingham, where she taught CCD, was a Daughter.

"Please come to a meeting and you'll have fun," she told Pacheco.

"I didn't know that I needed Catholic Daughters at that time," Pacheco said. "It was a really great healing experience after losing my mom, and the ladies were there for me when I lost my dad. So being a single mom, it was really very uplifting to have a group of women that I could be with and be myself with, and they understood anything and everything I was going through."

Baer has been a Catholic Daughter for just over a decade. She joked that she was "tricked into coming onto the board" by Pacheco, who invited her to a Daughters ice cream party.

"After that first meeting, I bonded with so many of the ladies there," Baer said, "and similar to Jenn (Pacheco), I had some things going on in my life at that time that having a group of ladies helped me grow spiritually and family-wise, because they are now my family, and it's been a blessing to be part of this group."

In northeastern states like Massachusetts, it is common to see CDA courts that are over 100 years old. DiMartino's court, St. Clementine of Medford and Somerville, is 103 years old. Younger courts in states like Texas, California, and Arkansas have hundreds of members and are "growing by leaps and bounds," she said, but New England's courts are dwindling.

"We're really struggling with the older courts and the aging out," she said.

Duford has been a Catholic Daughter since 1995, when she was a young mother who had recently joined Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. Back then, there were 32 courts in Massachusetts.

Now, only a quarter of them are left. Baer said that many Catholic Daughters are in nursing homes and can no longer be active in the organization.

"We need variety between 18 and older to be part of our group," she said. "We need a diverse membership, and that's where we're struggling. We do not have that currently."

In order to attract younger members like Baer and Pacheco, the Daughters are trying to spread awareness of their history and show younger women that they can have a fulfilling career and family life while also having time for faith-based work.

"Younger women want, like society, newer, faster, better," Pacheco said, "and aren't maybe getting out there and realizing what it is to be a Catholic woman and do charitable outreach."

The women agreed that through their work with the Daughters, they had become a sisterhood.

"We're each other's family now," DiMartino said.