FORT SMITH — In August 1969, members of St. Scholastica Monastery celebrated as 26 sisters left to establish an independent Benedictine convent, Our Lady of Peace Monastery, in Columbia, Mo.
“Although the final separation of those who before had been one community is, like any birth, a time of pain, yet, like a birth, it is also a time of joy,” Sister Louise Sharum, OSB, wrote in “Write the Vision Down,” a history of St. Scholastica Monastery’s first 100 years.
In December 2009 the remaining seven members of Our Lady of Peace Monastery voted to dissolve their monastery. Four of the members decided to re-join St. Scholastica. Two transferred their membership to other Benedictine monasteries and one member is on sabbatical and has not decided where to transfer.
“After the close of our community chapter on July 27, we will celebrate another joyful occasion when four of the sisters from our daughterhouse in Columbia, Mo., will transfer their promises of stability to St. Scholastica Monastery,” prioress Sister Maria DeAngeli, OSB, said. “Due to the lack of vocations, Our Lady of Peace Monastery, after a great deal of painful discernment, chose dissolution. We are happy to have the sisters with us and will walk with them in this time of adjustment.”
The return of the sisters from Columbia to Fort Smith has been gradual. Sister Alice O’Brien, OSB, Our Lady of Peace’s only temporarily professed sister, transferred to St. Scholastica Monastery in 2008. In early 2010, Sisters Rose Maria Birkenfeld and Rose Ashour, who had made their professions at St. Scholastica in 1951 and 1935, respectively, came home.
On June 4, the remains of four sisters — Sisters Sabina Gillespie, Ruth Heaney, Susanna Jones and Joann Schmidt, OSB — were reinterred in the monastery cemetery.
On June 21, Sister Barbara Bock, OSB, who had remained behind to help ready the building for sale, moved to the monastery. Sister Jane Fladung, OSB, who had made her profession in St. Scholastica in 1941, will remain in a nursing home in Olathe, Kan., near her family.
When the Benedictine sisters first moved to their new home in the Diocese of Jefferson City, Mo., they were already operating several ministries within the diocese, including St. Joseph Hospital in Boonville and community centers in St. Pius X Parish in Moberly, St. Joseph Parish in Pilot Grove and St. Thomas Parish in St. Thomas.
“The Benedictine sisters have not only been a vital part of our local church, but they have been our friends as well,” Bishop John Raymond Gaydos of the Jefferson City diocese told the Columbia Missourian Dec. 14. “It will be hard to let go of that.”
Sister Rose, who will celebrate her 75th jubilee July 24, lives in the infirmary but helps manage the periodical room. Sister Rose Maria works in the monastery gift shop. Sister Barbara has not been given a regular assignment yet. Sister Alice, who will make her perpetual profession in 2011, is a nurse in the infirmary, assistant vocation director and spiritual director.