Educating Mind and Heart
Educating Mind and Heart
The Mission of the Benedictine Sisters of Rock Island
From the beginning the mission of the Benedictine Sisters in Nauvoo, IL, was education.
Soon after the first 4 Sisters and a Postulant arrived in the small town on Oct. 15, 1874, they opened a “school for young ladies” on Nov. 7, 1874. Locals and boarders, Catholics and non-Catholics were taught fundamentals: literature, algebra, geometry, German, French, arts and religion as well as “household arts”. Sisters and students worked together in baking, doing laundry and fetching water from wells and cisterns.
St. Mary’s Academy grew: in 1898 a new building with classrooms and dormitories was opened. For 123 years the Sisters educated locals and boarders mainly in high school classes until the Academy was closed in June 1997 and the community moved to Rock Island, IL, in 2001.
From 1896 on our educational mission included grade and high schools throughout the Peoria Diocese: Sisters taught in a total of 18 diocesan schools and one public school as well as in catholic schools in Munster, IN, and St. Columba in Chicago for many decades, at times for 70+ years. A student recently told her former teacher: “I just want to tell you my gratitude…for letting me help with some things. I thrived with any attention you gave me” (she was the 8th of 15 children).
New demands arrived from the 1950s on: Sisters staffed Catechetical Centers (Ladd, BREC in Peru, IL), teaching religion in catholic and public schools, later training lay people to teach CCD.
From 1965 to 2015 we worked in Newman centers teaching college students about faith and life decisions. Sisters served as chaplains in hospitals teaching about death, grief and loss, others as pastoral associates in parishes, some taught life skills in social work.
Our main ministry in Rock Island is Benet House Retreat Center, offering programs on prayer and spirituality, retreats and spiritual direction; and we still have teachers in Catholic schools.
In our program for Oblates – lay associates – we help Catholic and non-Catholic adults seeking a more prayerful way of life with the help of the Benedictine Rule.
A student who had our sisters in grade and high school and has attended Benet House programs summed it up: the Sisters’ “orderly, but caring and compassionate approach to teaching helped me learn to be organized, thorough and prepared” in grade school; in high school “we were taught to listen, ask questions for understanding and then find links to other subject matter topics. Good approaches to all of life.”
We never stopped teaching: our mission of teaching children in school broadened and expanded – we always have taught in one way or another. Our focus has always been on the entire person – whether children, young or older adults. Retired or active: we still teach knowledge and faith, developing people’s gifts and broadening their outlook on life with its many challenges that can hit and trouble human beings at any age. (482)