At Angelus, Pope Francis prays for Indonesian Catholics injured in Palm Sunday bombing

Religious sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, sing as the process with the body of their late foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, on May 29, 2023, at their abbey near Gower, Missouri. The sisters exhumed the nun’s body on May 18 and discovered that it was apparently intact, four years after her death and burial in a simple wooden coffin. / Joe Bukuras/CNA

Gower, Missouri, May 29, 2023 / 20:02 pm (CNA).

The body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, an African American nun whose surprisingly intact remains have created a sensation at a remote Missouri abbey, was placed inside a glass display case Monday after a solemn procession led by members of the community she founded.

About 5 p.m., dozens of religious sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, carried their foundress on a platform around the property of the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus, reciting the rosary and singing hymns. Some of the thousands of pilgrims who visited the abbey over the three-day Memorial Day weekend followed behind.

The procession, held in bright, late-afternoon sunshine, culminated inside the abbey’s church, where the nun’s body was placed into a specially made glass case. Flowers surrounded her body and decorated the top of the case, where there is an image of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus. The church was filled with pilgrims, including many priests and religious sisters from other orders. 

Sister Wilhelmina, who founded the Benedictine order in 1995 when she was 70 years old, died in 2019. Expecting to find only bones, her fellow sisters exhumed her remains on May 18 intending to reinter them in a newly completed St. Joseph’s Shrine, only to discover that her body appeared astonishingly well-preserved.

The sisters say they intended to keep their discovery quiet, but the news got out anyway, prompting worldwide media coverage and a flood of pilgrims arriving at the abbey in Gower, a city of 1,500 residents about an hour’s drive from Kansas City, Missouri. A volunteer told CNA that more than 1,000 vehicles came onto the property on Monday but no official count was available.

There has been no official declaration that Sister Wilhelmina’s remains are “incorrupt,” a possible sign of sanctity, nor is there a formal cause underway for her canonization, a rigorous process that can take many years. The local ordinary, Bishop Vann Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, has said that a “thorough investigation” is needed to answer “important questions” raised by the state of her body, but there has been no word on if or when such an analysis will take place. 

Before Monday’s procession, pilgrims again waited in line throughout the day for an opportunity to see and touch Sister Wilhelmina’s body before its placement in the glass case, where it will remain accessible for public viewing.

Among those who came on Monday were Tonya and William Kattner, of Excelsior Springs, Missouri.

“You’ve got to experience the magic and the miracle of it,” Tonya Kattner said.

“It’s a modern-day miracle and it was just something we had to come to,” William Kattner said. “Especially with everything going on in the world today, something like this brings hope.”

Kate and Peteh Jalloh, of Kansas City, Missouri, also didn’t want to pass up the chance to see Sister Wilhelmina.

“I strongly believe in the Catholic faith. I believe in miracles and I have never seen anything like this before. I’ve got a lot going on in my life and this is the best time to get that message from a nun,” Kate Jalloh said.

“It could take another hundred years for us to see something like this,” she added.

Janie Bruck came with her cousins, Kristy Cook and Halle Cook, all from Omaha, Nebraska. 

“I came to witness the miracle. I believe we’re in a Jesus revolution and he’s sending us lots of signs,” Bruck said. Kristy Cook, a former Omaha police officer, said she was surprised that Sister Wilhelmina’s body had no odor of decay.

The sisters have publicly thanked the many local law enforcement officers, medical personnel, and volunteers who helped manage the influx of pilgrims over the holiday weekend.

Among the volunteers was Lucas Boddicker, of Kearney, Missouri, who joined members of his Knights of Columbus council based at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in nearby Plattsburgh, Missouri, to guide visiting vehicles to a makeshift parking lot in an open field. Other knights from local parishes helped set up tents and handed out free hamburgers, fruit, and bottles of water.

“That’s one thing the Knights do pretty well,” Boddicker said. “They get the word out when we need manpower.”

Priests heard confessions in a large grass field for hours, some using trees for shade, as young children played on the abbey grounds.

Three religious sisters from the Poor of Jesus Christ order, based in Kansas City, Kansas, said they were inspired by seeing Sister Wilhelmina’s body. 

One of the religious, Sister Azucena, said she “wanted to cry,” while praying at the nun’s side. “I just had this feeling of peace and love. We share a vocation. Her fidelity to the Lord and her love, I could feel that there,” she said.

A married couple, Jason and Jessica Ewell, both of whom are blind, were visiting Kansas City, Missouri, from Pennsylvania when they heard Monday morning about Sister Wilhelmina’s body.

“It’s just kind of a neat thing to be a part of the beginning of this story,” Jessica Ewell said.

“I was asking for her intercession for children for our marriage,” she said. “A lot of people think ‘Oh, it’s the blindness,’ but no, it’s not that at all,’” she said.

“Yesterday I was kind of in a place where I said, ‘God, I need something right now,’” she said. “We always hear about these miracles. But they’re long ago and far away and always happen to other people.”

Trish Bachicha, Jessica’s mother, said she believes that God is sending a message. 

“He saying ‘I’m alive and well and I haven’t forgotten you,’” she said.

[…]

Vatican City, Jan 5, 2018 / 06:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis said education is a family matter, and rather than contradicting one another, parents and teachers must collaborate openly and constructively to form children in core values which enable them to face modern challenges.

Speaking of the relationship between education and the family, the Pope said “everyone knows that this relationship has been in crisis for some time, and in certain cases is completely broken.”

At one point there was a mutual reinforcement between the instructions given by teachers and those given by the parents, however, “today the situation has changed.”

“But we cannot be nostalgic for the past,” Pope Francis said. Rather, we must make careful note of the changes that have affected both the family and schools, and renew our commitment “for a constructive collaboration for the good of children and young people.”

If this synergy no longer occurs in a “natural way,” he said it must be promoted with a planning approach, and if necessary with the contribution of experts in the educational field.

To do this, he stressed the need for “a new ‘complicity’ between teachers and parents. Above all to renounce thinking like opposing fronts, blaming each other.”

On the contrary, parents and teachers must put themselves in the shoes of the other, “understanding the objective difficulties that one and the other encounter today in education, thus creating greater solidarity.”

Pope Francis spoke to members of the Italian Association of Catholic Teachers at the conclusion of their national congress, which took place Jan. 3-5 in Rome.

He has stressed the importance of the relationship between parents and their children’s teachers before, using examples from his own past experience to drive the point home.

In his speech Friday, Francis also touched on the importance of building a culture of encounter from a young age and spoke of the need for a more solid education in ecology.

He encouraged those present to strive to build a culture of encounter in “an even more extensive and incisive way” than has been done in the past.

This “cultural challenge” is the basis for primary education, when children are still young, he said, explaining that Christian teachers, whether they are in Catholic or state-run schools, “are called to stimulate in the students an openness to the other as a face, as a person, as a brother and sister to know and respect with their story, with their merits and defects, their richness and limits.”

Francis said this also means forming youth who are open to an interested in the reality around them, who are capable of tenderness and free from the “widespread prejudice” which insists that to be worth something, “you must be competitive, aggressive, harsh toward others, especially toward those who are different,  a stranger or whoever in any way is seen as an obstacle to their own affirmation.”

Unfortunately, this is “the air” that children often breathe, he said, adding that the remedy is to make it so that they can breathe “a different air which is healthier, more human.”

To accomplish this, the relationship between teachers and parents “is very important,” he said.

Pope Francis also pointed to what he sees as the need for a greater ecological education, which he said doesn’t consist of just a few notions that are taught in the classroom, but instead means educating students in a lifestyle based on care for creation and the common home.

He stressed the need for “a lifestyle that is not schizophrenic,” such as that lived by those who care about animals going extinct but ignore the problems faced by the elderly, or those who defend the Amazon forest but neglect workers’ right to a just salary.

“The ecology in which to educate must be integral,” he said, adding that all education “must point to the sense of responsibility: not to transmit slogans that others should implement, but to rouse the taste of experiencing an ecological ethic starting from everyday choices and actions.”

Francis also touched on the importance of making and being part of associations, saying they are a value that shouldn’t be underestimated, but must rather be continually cultivated.

“I urge you to renew your will to be and make associations in the memory of the inspiring principles, in reading the signs of the times and with a gaze open to the social and cultural horizon,” he said, and told participants not to be afraid of the challenges and even conflicts that can often arise in lay associations.

Rather than being hidden, these differences must be confronted “with an evangelic style in search of the true good of the association,” he said, explaining that to be an association “is a value and a responsibility, which right now is entrusted to you.”

Pope Francis closed his speech thanking the participants for their presence and their work, and asked for their prayers.

[…]

Father Joseph Friend, Father Artur Bubnevych, and Father Donald Planty are among five U.S. parish priests who have been selected to attend a global gathering of 300 priests at the Vatican from April 28 to May 2, 2024, as part of the ongoing Syno… […]