02/22/08:Pioneer spirit of early years lives on in ideals of today - Congregation of the Sisters fo St. Agnes

Pioneer spirit of early years lives on in ideals of today

By Sharon Roznik

22 Feb. 2008

Fond du Lac Reporter

Long before women's lib, a group of feminine religious pioneers were blazing their own trail through frontier Wisconsin.

They became known as the Sisters of St. Agnes, young women who left behind a legacy of hospitals, orphanages and a Catholic foundation for fledgling communities to build upon.

"In 1855 most women in Wisconsin were uneducated and immigrants, looking for land. We were sent out in the wilderness to minister, to teach, to make a difference," said Sister Margaret Lorimer of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Agnes.

Lorimer's book "Ordinary Sisters" tells the history of an idealistic group of young nuns who answered Father Caspar Rehrl's call — when all others turned him down — to spread the gospel and educate the first settlers of the area.

As Lorimer tells it, these women had to battle and beg for food; and they had to learn how to live together and respond to whatever needs arose to teach and offer medical care.

"We were an American community. These were 13, 14 and 15-year-old farm girls told to go and live a life as religious women, in a religious order. Throw that in a pot, along with the different ethnicities…those were the challenges they faced," she pointed out.

In 1870, under the leadership of 23-year-old Mother Agnes Hazotte, 20 sisters, 14 novices and seven candidates settled in Fond du Lac. Self-sacrificing and idealistic, as Lorimer points out in her book, the sisters accomplished what they set out to achieve at the time: to survive and gain respect from the business community.

Now, 150 years later, these sisters have committed themselves to transforming the world, the church and themselves through "promoting systematic change for the quality of life; justice for the economically poor; and furtherance of the role of women in church and society."

In celebration of the Congregation's 150th anniversary, two retired sisters shared their tale of adventure as they traveled, much like their predecessors, down unknown roads.

Sister Virginia Adler, 71, lived for 14 years among the Pueblo nation on a reservation in the southwest town of Laguna, New Mexico.

Still lively at 91, Sister Perpetua Michelin tells the tale of ministering in 1969 in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Miss., during the crush of racial tension and the struggle for human rights.

Both women now reside at Court and Center, a retirement community for members of the Congregation, located on Gillett Street.

Among the Pueblo

Sister Virginia Adler was at a point in her life in 1993 where she needed a change and the Catholic Church needed missionaries at Laguna Pueblo, in New Mexico, a small community of Native Americans located about 45 miles west of Albuquerque. The Pueblo consists of six villages containing around 3,900 people. Historians believe the ancestors of the Pueblo have occupied the Laguna homelands since at least the 1300s.

She describes the landscape as a plaza on which the people celebrate with native dances and festivals, and hillsides dotted with homes. Each village has its own church, and through the years, the number of priests serving them has dwindled. Today, one priest serves two parishes.

Adler arrived feeling like a "stranger in a strange land."

"My first impression was, 'Oh my, what am I getting myself into?'" she recalled. "The first three years I was there all by myself."

Learning their customs broke down barriers as the Pueblo nation offered her an abundance of hospitality.

"I learned when you enter a room to meet everyone with eye-to-eye contact and shake their hand," she said. "They taught me about respect. They taught me we are all one people. They pray for everyone in the world."

Much of Adler's mission, she said, was helping members of the community merge Catholic belief and Native American tradition.

"It's something they struggle with, putting the two together," Adler said. "While I was there, they began to learn to accept that some of the basic tenets in each are really the same."

Discussions led by Adler over New Testament stories inspired the residents of Laguna to share their spiritual stories.

"They told me how the eagle takes their prayers to heaven," she said. "They are very spiritual people and make connections with the Catholic sacraments and the saints."

The community has its own government, school system and a vigorous Head Start program, but it struggles with low-income wage earners, poverty and an undereducated population. Many leave the reservation to work in the nearby cities.

"They still experience prejudice, because I've seen it. They go into a restaurant and wait and wait. They are the last to be served," she said.

Before returning to Fond du Lac in 2007, Adler said she taught a core group of people at Pueblo Laguna to take over the ministry she had nurtured.

"I found it a privilege to have lived and learned from these people," she said. "They opened up my heart and they opened me up to the world."

Mound Bayou

Sister Perpetua Michelin was already 60 years old when she hopped in a car in 1969 to follow her best friend, Sister Benedict Dorey, to minister among one of the poorest populations in the deep south.

"She said to me, 'You can come but I won't stand for any whining,'" Perpetua recalls. "I told her I could put up with anything but mice. Well, I learned to live with that too."

The two Sisters of St. Agnes stayed for 13 years in the town of Mound Bayou. Located in the Mississippi Delta, it is known historically as one of the first incorporated black towns in the country.

"I always wanted to work with the poor," Michelin explained. "For 17 years I worked at a ritzy place in Illinois and I was tired of it. I went south to be myself again."

Even though their work in Mound Bayou took place during de-segregation, Michelin said she and her friend had little trouble. They lived in an old beat-up trailer, Benedict was working as a health nurse and Michelin teaching art in the school, where she was the only white person.

"Sometimes Sister Benedict would be followed by white people if she had to take a (black) patient into town. They didn't like her doing that. One time she was at a doctor's office with a (black) patient and they told her to take the person across the street to use the rest room at the gas station," Michelin said, recalling their battle with racist attitudes.

Since many people in the community didn't read, the sisters would go door to door warning people when their taxes were due to be sure they paid them on time. Often, the black community would be charged double by storeowners and the religious duo was always on the lookout for scams and raw deals.

"You felt the fear. We dared not vote — they knew who you voted for and they'd do things to us like put sugar in our gas tank," Michelin said. "If we went somewhere and told people we were from Mound Bayou, they wouldn't wait on us. We learned to mind our P's and Q's."

In turn the black population of Mound Bayou expressed joy in its relationship with the two sisters of St. Agnes.

"They liked to be able to give back to us. We went down there, Sister Benedict and I, because everyone else refused to go help these people," she noted. "Not once while we were down there did the Lord let us down."

Since then, Benedict has passed away, but Michelin carries their friendship and time spent together in Mound Bayou in her heart.

The experience, she explained, helped her feel free.

"I am who I am. I'm a person who doesn't need things to be somebody," she said. "It was a joy to live simply."