Congregations turn to Benedictine for eldercare

Minnesota-based Benedictine has a long history of working with religious congregations to provide appropriate housing and health care for retired members. Some other examples: ber, start slowing down,’” she says with a chuckle. “I said, ‘I can’t do that. I have to be where people are.’”

Last year, a group of about 40 Adorers of the Blood of Christ moved to Benedictine Living Community — At The Shrine, a continuum-of-care complex in Belleville, Illinois, on the 200-acre grounds of the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows. The congregation had grown too small for its motherhouse in a tiny community about 30 miles away.

Sr. Mary Owen Stevermer has a studio unit in Windermere Way’s assisted living section. She has decked her space out with green accent pieces, a nod to her Irish heritage. She says she was mostly “a loner” during her 75 years in ministry, mainly filling housekeeping and food service roles.

In 2009, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet of St. Louis and Benedictine entered into a ministry partnership agreement to operate Nazareth Living Center in St. Louis. The congregation had previously been the sole operator of the facility for its retirees. Dozens of retired sisters now live there alongside lay residents.

Since 1997, Benedictine has cosponsored Villa St. Benedict in Lisle, Illinois, with the Benedictine Sisters of Sacred Heart. The eldercare community in suburban Chicago is on the grounds of the congregation’s campus.

Monastery in Duluth, who also sponsor Benedictine. However, the congregation is in the process of transitioning their sponsor council model to a ministerial public juridic person model.

Kukowski says she and her fellow sisters are able to maintain their spiritual and communal life. They can reserve the chapel for private services, meet for prayer in the Commons and use the closed-circuit TV system for virtual gatherings.

Smooth transition

Sr. Kukowski says there are things she misses from her days at Our Lady of Good Counsel, such as the large ornate chapel and sprawling gardens. However, she says her new home is comfortable and the new life among lay residents is becoming familiar to her and the other sisters. “We’re getting to really know each other,” she says.

The retired sisters moved to Shakopee in groups of about 10 over the course of several weeks. Because she was undergoing treatment in Mankato for liver cancer, Sr. Kukowski was among the last to arrive.

By the time she made the move in early November, the sisters had the process down pat. Professional movers arrived in the morning, packed up the furnishings and belongings and delivered them to Shakopee. The sisters left Mankato in the afternoon and by the time they arrived at their new quarters, their furnishings and belongings were in place. Other members of the order were on hand to greet them and to help them get settled.

“By the time I got here, a friend of mine already had the bed made and everything that she could do was done,” Sr. Kukowski recalls.

Finding a good fit

Now, Sr. Stevermer says, she’s enjoying the social aspects of her new life. She is chummy with a male resident who makes use of the communal laundry in the same early hours as she does. She dines in a community lunchroom surrounded by other sisters and lay residents.

She visits the Commons, a social space that Benedictine set aside exclusively for the sisters. “I make an effort to go up there every day to read the bulletin board and see what’s new,” Sr. Stevermer says.

She also spends much of her day in prayer, either in her unit or at the chapel just inside Windermere Way’s main entrance.

Spiritual support

Fr. Rinaldo Custodio, a retired diocesan priest, was one of the facility’s first residents. He celebrates Mass six days a week at either Windermere Way or at Benedictine St. Gertrude’s, which is a few miles away on the campus of St. Francis Regional Medical Center. The medical center is sponsored by the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica

Fr. Custodio says he enjoys living in a community with so many retired sisters, although he says that meeting the spiritual needs of so many devout elderly Catholics is demanding. “I’m supposed to be retired,” he says. “I’m not supposed to be doing anything.”

He gets assistance from Deacon Richard Roy and his wife, Maureen Roy. The Roys are both Eucharistic ministers and they lead the rosary at both Benedictine Shakopee campuses. The health system also recently posted an opening for a spiritual care coordinator to be based at Windermere Way.

The sisters, like all residents, can attend the Masses and the rosary sessions in person or in their rooms through closed-circuit TV. Benedictine also added monitors and hookups so that when the chapel at Windermere Way overflows, as it often does for Saturday evening Mass and funerals, residents can watch from other meeting spaces. It is adding similar technology in the chapel at St. Gertrude’s so the sisters there can attend funerals and provincial gatherings virtually.

Despite having to share the chapel with other residents, including those who are of faiths other than Catholic, and being separated across two campuses, Sr. Daniel Marie

Sr. Helen Jane Jaeb, part of the leadership team for the province, was on the committee that planned the retired sisters’ move. She and some other sisters who are still in active ministry remain in Mankato, although they don’t live at the motherhouse. It has been sold to a developer. The plans for the chapel remain in flux, although the congregation hopes to see it turned over to a nonprofit and kept as a sacred space.

Sr. Jaeb says the congregation made the decision several years ago to give up its large properties and find places where its sisters could live in community and receive needed health care support. Our Lady of Good Counsel is one of four locations of the School Sisters of Notre Dame Central Pacific Province, which covers 62 dioceses, 25 states, and Guam, Italy, Japan and Nepal.

Sr. Jaeb says Benedictine’s Shakopee facilities were a good fit not only because they are Catholic but also because Benedictine’s founding congregation, the Benedictine Sisters of Duluth, Minnesota, historically has had health care as part of its mission.

“The staff, from the top administration down, everyone at Shakopee were just wonderful and continue to be,” Sr. Jaeb says.

Mission continues

Though the sisters at Benedictine Shakopee are retired, Sr. Jaeb says the congregation encourages them to continue their ministry. “They themselves say their ministry now is to keep community and form community with more than just the sisters,” she says.

Yvonne Anderson, marketing director at St. Gertrude’s, says now that the sisters have settled in at Shakopee, she and others are helping them to connect with nearby Catholic institutions. “They want to volunteer and be engaged in the community at large,” Anderson says. “I think that they’ll bring many talents to our overall community, within a church, or within a school or within a hospital.”

Sr. Baumgartner says she and the other sisters are ministering to each other and reaching out to the lay residents at their Benedictine home. “I think it’s something else that God wants us to do,” she says. leisenhauer@chausa.org