Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel on the New England Campus of Thomas Aquinas College sustained an April 9, 2023, fire causing thousands of dollars in damages. / Courtesy of Thomas Aquinas College
Boston, Mass., Apr 13, 2023 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
As Father Greg Markey, head chaplain at Thomas Aquinas College’s New England campus, opened the door to the sacristy preparing for an early morning hour of eucharistic adoration on Easter Sunday, he was hit by a wall of black smoke.
“And immediately I said, ‘This is a fire. We have a fire here!’” Markey told CNA April 13.
Markey could see flames devouring the floor and walls of the wooden sacristy in the Our Lady of Perpetual Help chapel, which houses tens of thousands of dollars of handmade, antique vestments, along with incense.
He immediately sprung into action.
Markey ran for the fire extinguisher and gave it his best go at putting out the fire, but the flames raged in the over 100-year-old wooden church, which just went through a more than $1 million renovation in 2022.
He called the local Northfield Fire Department. As he was waiting for them to arrive, he ran to retrieve another fire extinguisher and exhausted that one as well.
The fire department arrived and quickly put the fire out. But the sacristy was lost. The church sustained major smoke damage.
The sacristy at Thomas Aquinas College. Courtesy of Thomas Aquinas College
It’s unclear whether or not the vestments, some of which contain “horse hair, metal and gold threads, and stuffing,” can be refurbished, Markey said. The cost of damages has not yet been calculated.
Although the church suffered extensive damage, its structure remained stable, something that Markey believes was the work of God.
After the fire was put out, one of the fire authorities told Markey: “You could have lost the whole church very easily. Somebody was watching over you.’”
“God was in control,” Markey told CNA. “If I hadn’t gone over that early, it really could have been a different story. So we’re just all very grateful.”
“We’re very fortunate we didn’t lose the whole church.”
The exterior of the chapel at Thomas Aquinas College. Thomas Aquinas College
For now, Mass is being celebrated in a different location on campus. As for what caused the fire, Markey believes that it was the improper disposal of incense following the Easter Vigil Mass the night before.
He said that one of the newer altar servers may have disposed of the foil, charcoal, and incense in the trash bin instead of leaving it in the thurible to cool overnight. The thurible is the vessel in which incense is burned during the liturgy.
Markey said that as he was walking through the sacristy with the fire chief after the blaze, he discovered that there were no incense, charcoal pieces, or ashes in the thurible.
“I knew instantly that was the cause of the fire. Somebody took it out and threw it in the garbage,” he said. “Where the garbage was, that’s where the heart of the fire was.”
“They probably wrapped up the tin foil and then just thought they were doing the right thing and just put it in the garbage,” he said.
“We could have lost the whole church. We’re just so very grateful we didn’t,” he said.
Thomas Aquinas College’s campus in Santa Paula, California, was founded in 1971. The New England campus was added to the college in 2019. The two campuses have a combined enrollment of 439 undergraduate students. The college, which is dedicated to ”renewing what is best in the Western intellectual heritage and to conducting liberal education under the guiding light of the Catholic faith,” receives no funding from the government or the Catholic Church.
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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.
Pilgrims visit the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Gower, Missouri. EWTN News
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.
Members of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, lead a procession with the body of their foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, at their abbey in Gower, Missouri, on May 29, 2023. Joe Bukuras/CNA
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.”
“It’s a really important story that reminds us of what is the great diversity of what is the Black Catholic experience.” – @BlkNunHistorian explains the significance of Sister Wilhelmina choosing a traditional habit for her community. pic.twitter.com/nJmyQ6UYjA
— EWTN News In Depth (@EWTNNewsInDepth) June 3, 2023
‘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.
Pilgrims visit the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Gower, Missouri. EWTN News
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.”
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