Spokane’s Mary of the Angels: reflections on a ‘place of peace’

In 1915 Bishop Francis Schinner called for FSPA to teach in Spokane, Washington’s St. Francis Xavier and St. Augustine schools. In 1959 Sister Dolora Dirkx called discerning aspirants to a new home in Spokane—Mary of the Angels—later referred to by Mother Mary Michael as “the ranch.” In 2010, on Aug. 16, Sister Rosile Pernsteiner called good bye to Mary of the Angels, a luster of light in the West, locking the door one last time.

Sister Rosile and all of FSPA celebrate 51 years of the presence of Mary of the Angels—the core of the community’s Western Province for 19 years and then of the Western Region for 13. It provided a foundation for teachers in institutions including Marycliff High School and for health care providers ministering in the Spokane diocese. It was a place for Franciscan hospitality, a home to semi-retired sisters including a conservationist cultivating the approximately 138-acre property, and a base for Clare Center staff members imparting spirituality. It was so much more.

Through Presence, some of Spokane’s sisters who’ve relocated to St. Rose contemplate their ministry there. An affiliate also gives her reflection. Three of the five FSPA who remain in Spokane to perpetuate the Franciscan mission share their intentions as well.

Sister Rosile Pernsteiner
Deemed a “living history” of Mary of the Angels by Sister Marie Kyle, Sister Rosile Pernsteiner (along with Sister Sharon Bongiorno) was one of the last Mary of the Angels residents to leave. She served as the Western Region leader from 1985 to 1993, as a Clare Center hospitality volunteer and then as maintenance supervisor for the past six years.

She recalls the last gathering at Mary of the Angels, how as the sisters of Spokane arrived “they were met at the entry with a For Sale sign. This was reality.” While they helped with the final cleaning “they reminisced over the last 51 years and left with a heavy heart. It is their hope,” says Sister Rosile, “that the next occupants will also find this scenic property to be a place of peace.”

Sister Sharon Bongiorno
For the past four years Spokane’s Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral Visitation Coordinator, Sister Sharon Bongiorno,has watched her local group, Francis Community, shrink. Even so, she endeavors to keep FSPA’s “long and illustrious history as vital as always.” Sister Sharon speaks to the edification she feels when former Spokane-area students, recognizing the FSPA medal around her neck, share praise for their FSPA teachers. “I thank God for the legacy of our sisters here and pray he provides the five of us with fortitude.”

Sister Kathy Roberg
Throughout 43 years Sister Kathy Roberg has ministered in many western states, yet has always felt “very tied to Mary of the Angels, to Clare Center, to Spokane.” There she feels that FSPA “is part of a real Franciscan element that is present, including the Poor Clare Sisters as well as approximately 80 members of the Secular Franciscans.”

Sister Kathy also has a sense of the “unique strengths” that have upheld the West, including Spokane, even through the changes decreed by the Second Vatican Council and the ramifications thereof. “When a large number of our younger sisters left FSPA to form the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist in 1973, the entire community was affected. The Western Province was most significantly impacted by the split. Yet in spite of it there seemed to be a strong spirit of determination to survive, which lingers on to this very day.”

Sister Patricia Gordon
Sister Pat Gordon, one of the last in Spokane, considers the West to be “mission territory,” and refers to Washington as one of the most “unchurched” states in America. Even so, from her Western regional leadership role to her current ministry responsibilities as a St. Francis Fraternity spiritual assistant and council member, she’s never felt disconnected from her Franciscan family in La Crosse, Wis. “We are all,” she says, “one community. FSPA has been a vibrant, Franciscan, Eucharist-centered presence in the Spokane diocese for 95 years. We look forward to our century celebration in 2015.”

Affiliate Pam Small
Pam Small is a resident of Spokane, an affiliate whose ceremony took place in 1998 after attending a Clare Center live-in, a member of FSPA’s Franciscan Hearts community and an advocate for special needs adults. “FSPA has imprinted a profound mark on Spokane by founding institutions such as Marycliff High School and Clare Center,” she says. “It was a blessing for all of us to have it for awhile.”

Sister Eileen Neumann
A certified master gardener, Sister Eileen Neumann was asked to care for the grounds surrounding Mary of the Angels in the mid-1980s; then in 1999 she joined the Clare Center staff to assist with programs like Taizé. She speaks of her profound Franciscan experiences of working with Mary of the Angel’s volcanic soil and of taking in the “startling scenery” shared with deer and wild turkeys (as well as an occasional moose, bear and elk spotted by Sister Rosile). “FSPA’s spiritual values of caring for nature in this place will always be preserved.”

Sister Theodora Feulner
Through Spokane’s Marycliff High School Sister Theodora Feulner came to know FSPA. As a nurse she went on to introduce FSPA to countless Spokane patients for more than 30 years as a member of the Health Care Province during its time, and as the charge nurse for the Sisters of the Holy Names Health Care Center for three years. Sister Theodora sends “a big thank you to all the sisters who made Mary of the Angels and Clare Center a wonderful place to meet, to learn and to develop a strong bond of community therein.”

Sister Betty Bradley
“The beauty and goodness surrounding us in all of creation elicits a personal response that wants to be visualized and shared,” says Sister Betty Bradley, who today actualizes those gifts from God through her ministry of art in Spokane. She remarks on the contrast between her life today as one of the “five strong” FSPA still residing there and her experiences growing up in her hometown of Spokane under the profound influence of 60 FSPA in six schools. “Lots of change—that’s life!”

Sister Marie Kyle
“I literally came face to face with FSPA’s Spokane history and its wonderful movement as I helped Sister Rosile [with Sister Mary Boniface Kriener] close Mary of the Angels,” says Sister Marie Kyle. Everything from the beautiful—altar, candlesticks, artwork and furniture, to the practical—beds, bedding, dishes and cutlery, is now serving people via organizations like Catholic Charities, diocesan parishes and homeless shelters. Sister Marie also experienced the FSPA legacy that is spiritual “in the ongoing FSPA mission, the churches and the schools. It will go on.”

Note: At press time the buildings are up for sale and acquisition of the land is under consideration by Spokane County’s Conservation Futures program.