(OSV News) — Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster of the Most Holy Rosary claimed to have had profound religious experiences, beginning in her childhood. She was born Mary Elizabeth Lancaster April 13, 1924 in St. Louis. Her great-grandmother, Mary Madden, had been a slave.
In a short autobiography discovered after Sister Wilhelmina’s death, she wrote that at her first Communion in 1934, 9-year-old Mary Elizabeth had “an unforgettable experience,” where “Our Lord asked me if I would be His.” “He seemed to be such a handsome and wonderful Man. I agreed immediately. Then He told me to meet Him every Sunday at Holy Communion. I said nothing about this conversation to anyone, believing that everyone that went to Holy Communion heard Our Lord talk to them.”
Notes with her eight-page autobiographical sketch, as shared by her religious community, also mentioned that the future Sister Wilhelmina also had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who thanked her for praying the rosary.
Foundress of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, in Gower, Missouri, Sister Wilhelmina died in May 2019 at age 95. On April 28, her body was exhumed from her grave to move it to a tomb in the monastery’s chapel. Despite her body not being embalmed, damage to her wooden coffin, and water sitting on her grave — all elements that should have contributed to her body’s decomposition — her body was found remarkably intact, the community’s sisters say.
The sisters said that a sainthood cause for Sister Wilhelmina may be taken up should widespread devotion to their foundress first be established.
Morticians Mystified by Sister Wilhelmina’s Body: ‘Something Special Going on There’
Jack Klein, owner of Hixson-Klein Funeral Home in Gower, Missouri, confirmed that the religious sister’s body was not embalmed and that the wood coffin was not placed into any outer burial container.
A young man touches a religious statue to the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster on May 18, 2023, at the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles monastery in Gower, Missouri. (photo: Used with permission)
Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 28 after diocesan spokesman said she was mistaken when she told CNA that Bishop Vann Johnston had ‘been in touch with someone in Rome’ about the condition of Sister Wilhelmina’s body.
Expert morticians are scratching their heads at the recently exhumed body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, a Benedictine nun who died in 2019 and now appears to be in an unexpected state of preservation.
The reactions come a week after the abbess and sisters of the community that she founded, the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, unearthed the 95-year-old African American religious sister’s simple wooden coffin on May 18 from the cemetery on the monastery grounds in rural Gower, Missouri, to relocate her remains to a final resting place inside their chapel.
Rest of the story here.https://www.ncregister.com/cna/morticians-mystified-by-sister-wilhelmina-s-body-something-special-going-on-there
Famous is the image in Syracuse, Sicily, which emanated tears in 1953, as a pregnant woman who slept beneath it was cured of toxemia so severe it had temporarily blinded her. [See yesterday’s story]
It was upon waking — and finding herself wonderfully able to see — that Antonina Lannuso (and husband Angelo) noticed it weeping.
It is now known as the Weeping Madonna of Syracuse (in Italian, Madonna Delle Lacrime), and a large church, with towering spire, was built to house it.
We have come to learn that four years before that event, incredibly, and far across the ocean, another image connected to the Madonna “wept” and was also in a city named Syracuse — this one in Upstate New York.
The occurrence: Tuesday, April 13, 1949, during Holy Week.
That day, the strongest earthquake in more than 130 years rattled the Pacific Northwest, killing eight. It was a mega-event, dominating news.
But in Syracuse, New York, the city’s attention was focused elsewhere — to be precise, on a house at 511 Hawley Avenue.
As the Post-Standard reported: “On April 3, 1949, while cleaning her home, Viola Martin, a divorced mother of four, placed a 2-foot tall plaster statue of Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, onto a windowsill. It fell outside and struck a rock, smashing into pieces. The statue left a small cross on the rock.
“Somehow, the head of the statue remained intact, suffering only a small scratch on its nose, and landed in the driveway.
“Shirley Anne, 11, the oldest of the children, and described as ‘very religious,’ found the head while playing and gave the statue a kiss.
“The head, she said, began to weep tears. She went to tell her mother. When her mother saw the teardrops, she was shocked.”
Soon, throngs were crowding the home’s front porch hoping to catch a glimpse of an 11-year-old girl and her weeping statue of Saint Anne and thousands more when the statue’s head was brought to Our Lady of Pompeii Church, where tears were witnessed by twenty people, including three priests, altar boys, and nuns. The tears reappeared when they were wiped away, usually materializing after the devout girl kissed it.
It even bears resemblance to the Sicilian image that would lacrymate four years hence [below].
A frenzy ensued, so many coming to see that police had to restore order. Said the newspaper: “Shirley Anne lightly touches her lips to the forehead, then holds the head away from her. In a moment, the dull plaster finish begins to glisten at the corner of one eye. The glistening spots spread, and touching them leave no doubt, that they are watery, tear-like liquid. If the tears are wiped away, they reappear when Shirley Anne again kisses the statue.”
Herman Borzner, the paper’s chief photographer — who called himself a “pretty skeptical guy” — said he “wouldn’t begin to explain it, but I saw water appear in the crevice between the eye and the nose on one side of the face.” Ditto for a nearby college professor.
(copyright, Heritage Microfilm)
The tears even appeared on live television — but stopped on Good Friday.
No coincidence, that it was Holy Week. The mother of Mary, weeping along with her daughter, weeping for her grandSon.
1949 was the year Israel formed as an independent nation, NATO was formed, and Russia tested its first atomic bomb. And perhaps it is no coincidence that the miracle was the same day as that quake. (The greatest quake ever to hit Alaska would occur fifteen years later — on Good Friday, 1964.)
The name “Syracuse” is from a pre-Hellenic word, perhaps Phoenician serah “to feel ill,” in reference to its location near a swamp. In biblical terms, it can also mean “to draw violently.”
