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Sister Scholastica Radel (left) and Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, discuss the recent exhumation of the order’s foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, in an interview with EWTN News In Depth on May 30, 2023, at their abbey in Gower, Missouri. / EWTN News

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 4, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).

Her flashlight was dim, so when Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell first peered inside the cracked coffin lid and saw a human foot inside a black sock where one would expect to find only bone and dust, she didn’t say anything.

Instead, she took a step back, collected herself, and leaned in for another look, just to be sure. Then she screamed for joy.

“I will never forget that scream for as long as I live,” recalled Sister Scholastica Radel, the prioress, who was among the members of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, who were present to exhume the remains of their foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster.

“It was a very different scream than any other scream,” the abbess agreed. “Nothing like seeing a mouse or something. It was just pure joy. ‘I see her foot!’”

What the sisters discovered that day would cause a worldwide sensation: Roughly four years after her burial in a simple wooden coffin, Sister Wilhelmina’s unembalmed body appeared very much intact.

In an exclusive TV interview with EWTN News In Depth, the two sisters shared details of their remarkable discovery — revealing, among other things, that Sister Wilhelmina’s body doesn’t exhibit the muscular stiffness of rigor mortis — and reflected on the deeper significance of the drama still unfolding at their Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus in rural Gower, Missouri.

They also clarified that Sister Wilhelmina’s coffin was exhumed on April 28, nearly three weeks earlier than CNA had understood. The sisters explained that it took about two weeks to remove dirt, mold, and mildew before they moved her body to the church. You can hear excerpts from the interview and other commentaries in the video at the end of this story.

Of particular significance to the members of the contemplative order, known for their popular recordings of Gregorian chants and devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass, is that the traditional habit of their African American foundress also is surprisingly well-preserved.

“It’s in better condition than most of our habits,” Mother Cecilia told EWTN’s Catherine Hadro.

“This is not possible. Four years in a wet coffin, broken in with all the dirt, all the bacteria, all the mildew, all the mold — completely intact, every thread.”

For the sisters, the symbolism is profound. A St. Louis native, Sister Wilhelmina spent 50 years in another religious order but left after it dispensed with the requirement of wearing its conventional habit and altered other long-established practices. She founded the Benedictines of Mary in 1995 when she was 70 years old.

“It’s so appropriate, because that’s what Sister Wilhelmina fought for her whole religious life,” Mother Cecilia said of the habit.

“And now,” Sister Scholastica said, “that’s what’s standing out. That’s what she took on to show the world that she belonged to Christ, and that is what she still shows the world. Even in her state, even after death, four years after the death, she’s still showing the world that this is who she is. She’s a bride of Christ, and nothing else matters.”

‘I did a double take’

The Benedictine community exhumed Sister Wilhelmina, almost four years after her death, after deciding to move her remains to a new St. Joseph’s Shrine inside the abbey’s church, a common custom to honor the founders of religious orders, the sisters said.

Members of the community did the digging themselves, “a little bit each day,” Mother Cecilia said. The process began on April 26 and culminated with a half-dozen or so sisters using straps to haul the coffin out of the ground on April 28.

The abbess revealed that there was a feeling of anticipation among the sisters to see what was inside the coffin.

“There was a sense that maybe God would do something special because she was so special and so pure of heart,” Mother Cecilia said.

It was the abbess who looked through the cracked lid first, shining her flashlight into the dark coffin.

“So I looked and I kind of did a double take and I kind of stepped back. ‘Did I just see what I think I saw? Because I think I just saw a completely full foot with a black sock still on it,'” she recalled saying to herself.

Sister Wilhelmina’s features were clearly recognizable; even her eyebrows and eyelashes were still there, the sisters discovered. Not only that, but her Hanes-brand socks, her brown scapular, Miraculous Medal, rosary beads, profession candle, and the ribbon around the candle — none of it had deteriorated.

The crown of flowers placed on her head for her burial had survived, too, dried in place but still visible. Yet the coffin’s fabric lining, the sisters noted, had disintegrated. So had a strap of new linen the sisters said they used to keep Sister Wilhelmina’s mouth closed.

“So I think everything that was left to us was a sign of her life,” Sister Scholastica reflected, “whereas everything pertaining to her death was gone.”

Another revelation from the interview: Contrary to what one would expect in the case of a four-year-old corpse, Sister Wilhelmina’s body is “really flexible,” according to Sister Scholastica.

“I mean, you can take her leg and lift it,” Mother Cecilia observed.

EWTN News In Depth also spoke with Shannen Dee Williams, an author and scholar who is an expert on the history of Black Catholicism. Sister Wilhelmina’s story, she said, is an important reminder of “the the great diversity and beauty of the Black Catholic experience across the spectrum.”

‘A unifying moment’

There has been no formal declaration by Church authorities that Sister Wilhelmina’s body is incorrupt, nor has an independent analysis been conducted of her remains, the condition of which has puzzled even some experienced morticians. Neither is there any official process yet underway to put the African American nun on a possible path to sainthood.

But that hasn’t stopped thousands of pilgrims from making the trek to northwest Missouri to see Sister Wilhelmina’s body, which was moved to a glass display case in the abbey church on May 29. And within the abbey’s walls, there is a pervasive sense of joy, gratitude, and wonder.

In the interview, Mother Cecilia called what’s happening at the abbey “a unifying moment for everybody” in a time of discord.

“There’s so much division, and it’s crazy,” she said. “We’re children of God the Father, every single one of us. And so you see, Sister Wilhelmina is bringing everyone together . . . I mean, this is God’s love pouring forth through people of every race, color,” she said.

“They come and they’re blown away, and it makes them think,” the abbess said. “It makes them think about God, about, ‘OK, why are we here? Is there more than just my phone, and my job, and my next vacation?’”

As for what comes next, no one can say. “We love God so much, his sense of humor, the irony, this humble little black nun hidden away in a monastery is a catalyst for this. It’s like a spark to send fire to the world,” Mother Cecilia said.

“It’s just remarkable,” she said. “But this is the kind of thing that God does when we need a wake-up call.”

[…]

Pope Francis speaks at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 4, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, May 4, 2022 / 07:35 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said on Wednesday that having faith is not something only “for old people,” but an essential element of life.

“In many trends in our society and culture, the practice of faith suffers from a negative portrayal, sometimes in the form of cultural irony, sometimes with covert marginalization,” Pope Francis said at his general audience on May 4.

Speaking in St. Peter’s Square, the pope said that having faith is, instead, something to be proud of because “it has changed our lives, it has purified our minds, it has taught us the worship of God and the love of our neighbor.”

“The practice of faith is not the symbol of our weakness, but rather the sign of its strength,” he said.

The pope spoke at the general audience about the witness that the elderly can offer to younger generations by remaining faithful until the end, like the biblical figure of Eleazar, whose story is described in the Second Book of Maccabees.

Pope Francis encouraged the elderly to be like Eleazar in showing young people a consistent witness to the faith.

“We will show, in all humility and firmness, precisely in our old age, that believing is not something ‘for old people.’ No. It’s a matter of life,” he said at live-streamed audience.

The pope compared the tendency in modern society for people to claim to “have an interior spirituality,” and then do whatever they please, to “the first heresy of the Gnostics.”

The Gnostic heresy, named for the Greek word “gnosis,” meaning “knowledge,” exaggerated the importance of knowledge over faith and considered the body and matter to be evil. The result was a denial of the Incarnation of Christ and a focus more on thinking rather than living a good Christian life.

Pope Francis said: “The practice of faith for these Gnostics, who were already around at the time of Jesus, is regarded as a useless and even harmful external, as an antiquated residue, as a disguised superstition. In short, something for old men.”

“The pressure that this indiscriminate criticism exerts on the younger generations is strong,” he added.

The pope said that the “seductive trap” of Gnosticism is the proposal that “that faith is a spirituality, not a practice.”

“Faithfulness and the honor of faith, according to this heresy, have nothing to do with the behaviors of life, the institutions of the community, the symbols of the body. Nothing to do with it,” he said.

Pope Francis highlighted the commendable example of Eleazar, who “lived the coherence of his faith for a whole lifetime.”

He said: “The biblical story … tells of the episode of the Jews being forced by a king’s decree to eat meat sacrificed to idols. When it’s the turn of Eleazar, an elderly man highly respected by everyone, in his 90s … the king’s officials advised him to resort to a pretense, that is, to pretend to eat the meat without actually doing so. Hypocrisy … These people tell him, ‘Be a little bit of a hypocrite, no one will notice.’”

“It is a little thing, but Eleazar’s calm and firm response is based on an argument that strikes us. The central point is this: dishonoring the faith in old age, in order to gain a handful of days, cannot be compared with the legacy it must leave to the young, for entire generations to come,” the pope said.

Pope Francis remained seated throughout the general audience. He required assistance as he slowly hobbled up a ramp to reach his chair in St. Peter’s Square. The pope is reportedly receiving therapeutic injections for his knee injury this week.

In his greetings to pilgrims from different parts of the world, the pope encouraged people to pray the rosary every day during the month of May. He encouraged Polish pilgrims, in particular, to “entrust the fate of your homeland and peace in Europe to the Holy Virgin.”

Addressing French-speaking pilgrims, he greeted members of La Voie romaine (the Roman Way), an association supporting a group of mothers of priests walking from Paris to Rome to ask the pope to lift restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass.

The mothers left the French capital on March 6 and arrived in Rome on April 30. They were expected to meet the pope at the end of the general audience, presenting him with thousands of messages from Catholics who say they were adversely affected by the motu proprio Traditionis custodes.

[…]

Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington. Courtesy photograph. / null

Burlington, Vt., Mar 8, 2022 / 17:08 pm (CNA).
In a letter to parishioners of Holy Family Parish in Springfield, Vermont, Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington announced that … […]