Sister Madonna Steines' Story & Gallery
Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Madonna Steines was born in 1916 and grew up in Springbrook, Iowa. Her parents immigrated from Germany and were married in Springbrook in 1888. Sister Madonna was the 12th child and baby of the family. Before she was four years old her parents retired from farming and moved to Bellevue, Iowa. Attending St. Joseph School, she was an eager student and loved her early teachers, Sister Hyacinth Maslowski and Sister Jane Braun. At 16 she had a vocation and after two years of high school, planned to enter the FSPA. She joined the community as a novitiate in 1933, professed in 1935 and completed her final vows in 1941.
Sister Madonna studied at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1941 to 1942, gaining her degree in art. Her thesis, a book of poems about St. Francis for which she lettered and illustrated by hand, was titled, “St. Francis in Verse”. After completing her degree, she began her ministry of education teaching art and served in La Crosse (Aquinas High School and St. Rose High School), Wisconsin; Carroll (St. Angela Academy) and Prairie du Chien (St. Mary Academy), Iowa; and Spokane (Mary Cliff High School), Washington. For several summers, she taught art at Viterbo College in La Crosse as well as a Catholic college in Washington State. Sister Madonna retired to Villa St. Joseph in La Crosse in 2001 and died in 2004.She is remembered as an inspiring and creative educator who always found something to praise in the work of her students.
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