Ave Maria University |
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Benedictine Sisters
ABOUT US
...Small beginnings, but a great vision...an idea whose time has come.
Why another Benedictine house? The inspiration was incipiently sown while Sr. Gertrude Gillette, OSB, was doing graduate work in the mid-90s and met monks who spent some of their monastic day in the classroom. The idea of a house of Benedictine women who cherished all the traditional monastic practices plus taught part time was very attractive to her. She began to dream.... The dream persisted even after she had finished her graduate studies and was teaching in Austria. While in Europe, she was able to visit several monastic houses, including the renowned Abbey of St. Walburga in Eichstätt (Bavaria) itself near to the Catholic university of that town. In fact, the nuns of St. Walburga had been involved with education for many years, some even at the University level (in manuscript work) from time to time. The dream was becoming more tangible. The real impetus came after she had moved to Rome in 1999. Her studies in Monastic History and in Canon Law at the Benedictine College of Sant'Anselmo, led her to ask the professor of monastic Canon Law some direct questions on the feasibility of such a dream. When all her questions were answered in the affirmative — and with the blessing of her superior and her spiritual director — she began to think seriously of a place for such a monastery. A few other interested parties added encouraging fuel to the fire. It was then that an invitation came to establish the house near Ave Maria University. And so, Sr. Gertrude and Sr. Theresa Scheuren, OSB, came to Naples, Florida, arriving in August 2003 at the same time as the new Ave Maria University was opening its doors to its first class of freshmen. They had come to establish a new house with a new concept among the monastic houses of women in America.
May God bless their small beginnings....