Taking first vows

growing number of ways for women to take on consecrated life is present in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: The Handmaids are now established in Hopkins, a Pro Ecclesia Sancta sister took first vows at

St. Mark in October and a parishioner of St. Paul in Ham Lake has found a secular institute to be the right fit for her in living out the faith.

Religious commitment A

For New Ulm-based Handmaids, a new convent, a new opportunity

By Maura Keller For The Catholic Spirit

Young women dedicating their lives to God as the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus have a new convent in Hopkins to call home.

In August, 12 sisters within the religious community moved into the newly renovated convent at St. Gabriel the Archangel to fulfill a call to work in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“The (archdiocese) has always been home, and it has always been a dream to be here,” said Mother Mary Clare Roufs, who founded the community in 2007 with three other women. “We love the priests and we love the people. It is really home for a lot of our sisters. As diocesan sisters, we want our sisters to be serving in their home dioceses when and where they can.”

Mother Mary Clare formed the idea for the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus after receiving what she called “the founding grace” in December 2006.

“I was at The St. Paul Seminary and Archbishop (Harry) Flynn was preaching on Mary, and he simply started by saying, ‘Mary. How beautiful is the name Mary?’ And I just thought that God wanted a new community of sisters,” Mother Mary Clare recalled. “This charism was really being born in my heart, and so I asked a few young women to consider living the life with me, and we started in August 2007 with the permission of Archbishop Flynn. From that day it has been a time in which the Lord just continues to lead us every step of the way.”

The Handmaids lived in the archdiocese for three years before Bishop John LeVoir of New Ulm formally invited them to be established in his diocese in December 2009.

“In March 2010, Bishop LeVoir formally established us as a ‘public association of the lay faithful’ in hopes of us becoming a ‘religious community of diocesan right,’” Mother Mary Clare explained.

To gain that distinction — “a religious community of diocesan right” — there are typically at least 40 members in a community and over half of them should be in perpetual vows, she said.

“The Church wants to see that you are growing, that you are strong with good membership before that would happen,” Mother Mary Clare said. “For most communities, that would be about 20 to 25 years into their life, depending on how they grow. We aren’t there yet because part of what the Church does is she says, ‘Give it a try. Let us walk with you and then in time, if it is right, it will be more formally established.’”

In 2018, the Handmaids expanded by establishing a house in Duluth, where four sisters currently reside. The Handmaids’ New Ulm motherhouse includes 17 sisters, and the Hopkins house has 12 sisters, including five postulants, who are women discerning becoming Handmaids. If after a year they want to continue that discernment process, they will enter the novitiate program in New Ulm.

From the rural farmlands of New Ulm to the lakeside environs of Duluth to the urban life of Hopkins, the Handmaids feel called to live in an imitation of Mary as spiritual mothers in a parish family, engaging the new evangelization

DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT Sister Mary Pieta of the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus teaches seventh graders Oct. 29 at Holy Family Academy in St. Louis Park.

as diocesan sisters. Quite simply, they are spiritual mothers who are complementing the fatherhood of diocesan priests.

“Where you see a priest in a diocesan parish working and serving a parish family, we would work alongside of him, complementing him in our consecrated lives and helping the parish become a family of faith,” Mother Mary Clare said.

The sisters had begun to renovate a building on the campus of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul in 2017, but a series of delays and construction and permit-related red tape impeded that effort, and a year later the Handmaids decided to look for another, more suitable building.

The Handmaids began their journey to downtown Hopkins in 2019, when sisters began working with volunteers to help renovate a convent. The following year, four sisters moved into the empty rectory next to St. Gabriel’s St. Joseph campus as renovation on the convent continued. The remaining sisters moved in August 2021, when the renovations were complete.

“It was a real homecoming when we finally came back and established the house,” Mother Mary Clare said. “It is a fulfillment of God’s goodness. And it is where the original charism and grace was received, and so what a joy it is for us to finally come home.”

The Handmaids’ apostolate differs according to the needs of the local Church in which they serve. Hopkins provides an opportunity for the Handmaids to express their charism in different ways, including at St. Gabriel and, next door, Chesterton Academy in Hopkins, as well as nearby Holy Family Academy in St. Louis Park, the University of Minnesota’s Newman Center and St. Lawrence parish in Minneapolis, and St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul.

Sister Mary Joseph Evans, postulant directress at the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus’ house in Hopkins, has been a member of the community for 12 years. She has lived most of those years in New Ulm, before moving to Duluth three years ago, and finally residing in the new house in Hopkins.

“It is such a great joy for our community to have a convent in the archdiocese and to be serving here. Many of our sisters are from the archdiocese, and it’s part of our diocesan charism to serve at home,” said Sister Mary Joseph, who grew up as a member of St. Joseph in West St. Paul. “To be back serving among the priests and the families and be able to be spiritual mothers is such a great joy and something we’ve been looking forward to for many years. It has been a great gift to have our postulants here in Hopkins, and it allows them to get a good experience of the different ways in which we serve and the richness of life here.”

Mother Mary Clare said she is thankful for the tremendous support of Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Bishop LeVoir and Bishop Andrew Cozzens, auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese who Dec. 6 will be installed as the eighth bishop of Crookston, as the Handmaids’ community has continued to grow.

“After receiving the founding grace for our community, I had approached Bishop Cozzens and asked if he would consider helping us in our formation of our sisters and he agreed generously. From that day on, he has been very generous in teaching our sisters on such things as prayer, the spiritual life, vows and he directs our sisters (on) an eight-day silent retreat every year,” Mother Mary Clare said. “He has been a spiritual father to us and a friend. Although he’s heading up to Crookston, there will be a little bit more distance, but he will always be a part of our family.”

She said that being part of the archdiocese offers beautiful ways in which the Handmaids can express the elements of their charism and live out their “spiritual maternity” because of its variety of schools and its two seminaries.

“Our hope and our mission is to help people discover the joys of living their Catholic faith and having a personal relationship with Jesus,” Mother Mary Clare said. “As we do that together as a family, it will continue to enrich our lives together as we continue to seek him.”

UST alumna’s vows were Pro Ecclesia Sancta’s first taken in the U.S.

By Maria Wiering

The Catholic Spirit A s a young Catholic growing up in the northern Twin Cities metro, Sister Maddie Shogren didn’t know any religious sisters.

So, she attributes the fact that she now is one only to God’s grace and providence.

“I’m very happy,” said Sister Maddie, who professed first vows Oct. 15 as a sister of Pro

Ecclesia Sancta. Her temporal vows were the first a woman has taken outside of Peru, where PES is based.

Being able to profess vows in the Twin

Cities meant that she was surrounded by family and friends who may not have been able to travel to Lima — and the opportunity for them to see something that many Catholics never personally witness in the life of the Church.

The day brimmed with “lots of joy, lots of emotion,” said Sister Maddie, a 26-year-old alumna of the University of St. Thomas in

St. Paul. The superior of PES’ female branch,

Mother Naeko Matayoshi, was present for

Sister Maddie’s vows. She professed them during a Mass presided by Bishop Andrew

Cozzens, bishop-designate of Crookston, at

St. Mark in St. Paul, a parish where PES priests and sisters serve. Concelebrating were two of her relatives, both priests of the

Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: her uncle Father John Floeder of The St. Paul

Seminary and her cousin Father Louie

Floeder, associate pastor of Divine Mercy in

Faribault. Frankie Floeder, Sister Maddie’s cousin and a seminarian, served at the altar.

“It was a beautiful moment where I could profess my vows before the Lord, and promise him to live and try to imitate (him) by living out the evangelical counsels, which are poverty, chastity and obedience,”

Sister Maddie said. “That was a very beautiful and intimate moment between me and the Lord.”

Sister Maddie’s white veil is a sign that she’s taken temporary vows. She’ll likely take final or permanent vows in four to five years. She is the second woman from the

Twin Cities to take first vows with PES; Sister

Laura Holupchinski took her first vows in 2018. She is also the fourth American to take first vows — two others, Sister Leann

Luecke and Sister Lynn Luecke, are biological sisters from Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Sister Maddie grew up attending St. Paul in Ham Lake, and she was homeschooled until she entered Blaine High School. The

PES sisters were the first religious sisters

Sister Maddie got to know personally, and she was somewhat surprised to find that she had fun with them, and they were anything but dull. She met them while attending meetings of a Catholic women’s leadership group her sophomore year at St. Thomas.

She was studying secondary math education, and she pictured her future self as a math teacher, married with children.

However, the PES sisters were joyful and loved to laugh, and she was attracted to their mission to serve the family and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

That year she got serious about her prayer life, dedicating more and more time to what she described as conversation with Jesus.

She began by committing five minutes a