A Quick Look at the Founding History
Benedictine Sisters – Mount St. Benedict Monastery
Erie, Pennsylvania
Written by S. Janet Goetz
Our community was founded when five Sisters who were members of Saint Joseph’s Convent, Benedictine Sisters of St. Marys, PA, were on their way to Minnesota. They planned to stop in Erie at St. Mary’s Parish and then make railway accommodations to Minnesota. Sister Benedicta Riepp was accompanied by Sisters Scholastica Burkhard, Luitgard Butsch, Frances Knapp, and Anselma Schoenhofer when they arrived in Erie on June 21, 1856. Bishop Joshua Young insisted that the Sisters stay and establish a Benedictine convent for the purpose of instructing the German-speaking youth of St. Mary’s parish. Mother Benedicta stayed in Erie until the community was settled in its new home. Before August 25, 1856 she returned to St. Marys, PA having appointed Sister Scholastica Burkhard as the first superior of St. Benedict Convent, Erie, PA.
The new school year began approximately a month or so later with more than forty students. Sister Luitgard Butsch became ill with tuberculosis only five months after their arrival and in January Mother Benedicta brought Sister Josepha Buerkle to replace Sister Luitgard as an English-speaking teacher. Under the leadership of Mother Scholastica Burkhard the community increased in membership from five to thirteen in just one year.
The Congregation/Federation was founded
In 1858 when the sisters were still under the jurisdiction of their motherhouse in Eichstatt, Abbot Boniface Wimmer sent requests to Rome asking that the sisters be allowed to become part of the congregation of Benedictine monks and that they observe the statutes follow by the men. To his disappointment, Rome’s decision was to place the sisters under episcopal jurisdiction. In 1879, Bishop Louis Fink of Leavenworth, Kansas sent a letter to all the bishops in whose dioceses Benedictine sisters had established foundations; the letter includes a draft of a constitution he had formulated for the Kansas sisters. He hoped that a meeting could be held to address the need for a constitution for all the United States Benedictine Sisters. Mother Theresa Vogel sent a letter of invitation to the prioresses of the Benedictine convents. The meeting was planned for August 4, 1879 in Covington, Kentucky. It had to be cancelled because there was an outbreak of smallpox in Covington.
The Benedictine Sisters who founded St. Joseph Convent in St. Marys, PA were from St. Walburg Convent in Eichstatt Bavaria. “Mother” Benedicta Riepp, and Sisters Walburga Dietrich, Maura Flieger arrived in late July 1852. (The title Mother indicates that she had been appointed superior of the group before they left Eichstatt. The title “Sister” will be used before she became the superior in America.) From the time of entrance into the Eichstatt community Benedicta was being prepared to teach in the girls’ school of Eichstatt. She was appointed novice mistress shortly after her solemn profession at the age of twenty-four. Sister Benedicta had been a teacher and novice mistress only three years when Mother Edwarda Schnitzer appointed her superior of the first group bound for the new mission in North America. During her thirteen years at the Eichstatt convent, Walburga Dietrich served as the portress and an instructor of needlework. She would be the only one of the three foundresses to remain at St. Joseph Monastery at St. Marys until her death in 1877. Maura Flieger had professed her solemn vows only one year before she came to North America and within five years of arriving in St. Marys, PA she relocated to Erie. She too had taught needlework in Bavaria. They came aboard a ship into New York harbor but there was no one to greet them. Eventually they made their way to St. Marys a town of German immigrants who settled amid a forest of trees. They came as ‘nuns’ from Eichstatt, but settled in North America as ‘sisters’, destined to teach as an external work and unable to keep the required enclosure on the frontier.
From August 4-8, 1917, ten prioresses and nine delegates from across the county met in Chicago to revive discussions about the Constitutions and Declarations of a possible congregation. These discussions had stalled ten years earlier. The prioresses reviewed the Constitutions provided by Abbot Innocent Wolf for the sisters, made revisions and accepted them. The revised Constitutions were again submitted to Rome but did not receive approbation until 1922. The Congregation of Saint Scholastica was finally approved June10, 1930 after a trial period of seven years.
Artifact Spotlight
Bookends made of wood and doorknobs from convent 327 East 9th Street, the original motherhouse.
