Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
St. Albert in Minneapolis: Remembering 75 Years
by Doris Rauenhorst, OP
St. Albert the Great Church and School in 1965, Minneapolis, MN.
Photo courtesy Sinsinawa Dominican Archives.
We can only imagine the dismay of those first six Sisters when, after a long trip to Minneapolis, MN, to open both a new convent and school, they found that their convent was not yet ready for occupancy and the school was still only half finished. But for these intrepid women, there must also have been some excitement in meeting the challenge. From the beginning in 1935, the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa ministered side-by-side with the Dominican priests to build the parish of St. Albert the Great and to serve its people.
After the Sisters were no longer commuting every day from the convents at Holy Rosary and Incarnation, they were able to focus more directly on finding places to register students and hold classes for the first day of school. Since only the basement of the school was “finished,” its corners became the classrooms for all but the 1st and 2nd graders. These 50 young boys and girls were squeezed into the first floor front porch of the convent for their beginning classes at St. Albert. Prolonged recesses and early dismissals seemed to be the only solution to the nerve-wracking situation of the ongoing construction noise.
In keeping with standard practice in those pre-Vatican Council days, Sisters were expected to live in stark simplicity and with a relationship of dependence on the pastor as well as on parishioners for most aspects of their daily living. The stories they recorded in their annals reflect their delight when the pastor brought them some much-needed chairs or when Mrs. Wall (Altar Rosary Society) brought over a mangle (a great help for pressing freshly-laundered habits).
The Sisters also rejoiced over Father Burke’s generous decision to pay the Sisters $10 a month to have the music Sister play the organ at novena services, $1 for every requiem Mass (which was celebrated nearly every weekday of the year back then), and $3 for every funeral. Father Burke also requested that the convent remain open during the summer, a boon for both the Sisters and the parish, and he gave the Sisters $200 for their summer expenses. Annual food showers were a greatly appreciated gift.
It was Virginie [Borre, OP 1914–1993] and Marie Edward [Claire McCaslin, OP] of St. Albert Convent who conceived the plan to furnish the new novitiate building at Sinsinawa, the 1964 addition to the Motherhouse, by collecting green stamps. Millions of green stamps collected from across the United States bought beds, linens, lamps, etc., for a building with 300 bedrooms.
The post-Vatican years saw essential changes in the way the Sisters ministered in the parish, as well as doing outreach into the surrounding neighborhood. Diane Faust, OP, for example, taught art activities in Longfellow and Cooper extended day care programs. The Sisters and priests began to work together more as teams and collaborators in various ways. Besides teaching in the school, Sisters began to share in parish pastoral and liturgical ministry and served as visitors to the sick and elderly. By 1970, work had begun on a total education plan for the parish. The Sisters left the school in 1987. The convent, which had housed so many happy, generous, and memorable Sisters, was then converted into the parish center.
Over the years there was a remarkable flowering of vocations to the priesthood and religious life among the children of the parish. Among those calls which the parish community nourished and Sisters and priests encouraged and sent forth are Sinsinawa Dominicans Marie Raymond Strunk, OP (1915–2001); Bernadette Smith, OP (1929–2008); Fridolin Clark, OP (1916–1986); Mary Ellen Rains, OP; Sharon Casey, OP; Geran Madison, OP; LouAnne Willette, OP; Mary Margaret Murphy, OP; and Doris Rauenhorst, OP.