Bounced from St. Catherine-St. Lucy 23 years ago, Sr. Teresita welcomed home

She knows.

From 1979 when this black nun was invited by the pastor to join the parish staff, to preach, to minister, until 1991 when another pastor booted her from the parish for overstepping boundaries set by the archdiocese, Weind had been in the pulpit at least monthly. She had also led retreats, ministered to the sick and helped Carolan and others create and nurture a racially integrated faith community that continued to encompass both Oak Park and Austin, just as St. Catherine's and St. Lucy's parishes had done for a hundred years.

The weekend of Sept. 5-7, as the parish launched its 125th anniversary celebration, Weind was back for a Friday reception, led a well-attended Saturday retreat and attended Sunday mass at the church at Austin and Washington boulevards. 

Shelby Boblick, for the last three years a pastoral associate at the parish, refers to Weind as a "soul model." 

"I've had people sign up for the retreat she led on Saturday who have named their daughters after Teresita. I've gotten phone calls from children of deceased parishioners who have waited to inter their parents' ashes until Teresita could come back and say a prayer at the interment," said Boblick.

Pat Koko, who served as a staff member with Weind, emphasized her "ability to connect with people, her spirituality and her humanity. I can't think of anyone who ever met her who was uncomfortable with her."

How Teresita Weind grew into an African American, female minister in the Roman Catholic church who has been deeply loved by most of the parishioners she served is a story about a Negro, as black folk were referred to in the 1940s, girl who was nurtured by caring adults, both white and black, and tempered by struggle.

Her life has taken her from the Baptist church to Catholicism, from nursing to leading an order of nuns, from North Dakota to Rome. But her 12 years in Oak Park and Austin clearly were formative both in the work she accomplished and in the harsh manner of her exit.

Now 72, Weind has just been elected to a second six-year term as the congregational leader of the 1,300 members of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. While based in Rome, Teresita travels the world, wherever members of the order serve.

But it was in 1970, following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King and her evolving sense of the place of race in America that Weind was ready when a Benedictine priest invited her to leave North Dakota and her nursing profession and come to work as a parish minister in the then notorious Cabrini Green neighborhood in Chicago.

"I took to the ministry like a duck to water," she said. "It was a good fit because of people. I love to work person to person. I served in Cabrini Green just doing everything, learning to be a parish minister. Coming from nursing, I was uneducated and unformed for that ministry, but it turned out that all that background in nursing helped." 

'She can really preach'

In 1979, Rev. John Carolan invited Weind to come and work as a pastoral associate at St. Catherine-St. Lucy where he was pastor. It was a time of dynamic and sometimes anxiety raising change on the West Side of Chicago and across the boulevard in Oak Park as well. Large sections of the West Side had burned in 1968 following King's murder. The Vietnam War was dividing the country. White flight to the suburbs radically changed the demography of the Austin neighborhood which had always been half of the parish's geography. St. Lucy Catholic Church had left its building in Austin and their congregation was trying to merge smoothly with St. Catherine. And on top of that, the Second Vatican Council had fomented changes that shook the Roman church. Some Catholics were highly energized while others felt a profound loss.

Weind's memory of those first days at St. Kate's is that in the midst of all of the turmoil going on around them, there was a fairly hopeful attitude in the mainly white congregation. "I thought that the mood was more positive than negative," she said. "I thought the mood was that we can make integration work. I don't remember having to break down a lot of attitudinal barriers."

The connections among the parish staff were strong. "Overall I've been remembering 12 years of good shared collaborative service and ministry," said Weind. "John Carolan was a pastor who enabled us to serve together as we did."

Pat Koko described the pastor, who to this day remains as pastor emeritus: "Fr. Carolan was not a control guy. He liked to delegate. He was aware of everything but didn't have to run it. He was in total support of lay ministry."

Carolan had her giving the homily once a month. Doris Brown and her family joined St. Catherine-St. Lucy in the tumultuous year of 1968, the first African Americans to do so. She said, "When I mention Sr. Teresita's name to my husband Eddie, his eyes light up and he says 'she can really preach.'" Fannie Cooper, who joined the parish a year before Teresita arrived, said that her preaching made an impact because "there was a connection between how you see her every day and what she says in her homilies. She lives as she speaks."

After a few years at the parish, Weind initiated a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day every January in which those present would renew a vow of nonviolence. She acknowledged that there were "a minimal number of people" who refused to participate but that there were no people outside protesting the celebration of the civil rights leader's legacy.

Koko said that Weind became known as a gifted retreat leader. "Let's face it, she was a black nun and in some parishes African Americans were becoming the majority, so to get someone of their own color to walk them through a spiritual path was a good thing." But she adds, "spirituality was always the most important thing that drew people to the retreats, not the multicultural." 

Beyond race and gender

Indeed, when whites reminisce about their experiences with her, what they always emphasize is her humanity rather than her race or gender. Carolan said, "She was just a loving person. I think you forgot about her race after a while. That was the kind of person she was."

"We used to do parish staff meetings at a cottage near Delavan [Wisc.]," Koko said. "At the home Mass at the cottage, we sang one of the songs that had been sung at my dad's funeral. I had been so busy with my dad's death that I hadn't really grieved yet, but with that song I started to bawl. I went up to my room and cried. Teresita came up, threw her arms around me and we cried together. She's just a human being that we love and who cared for us."

The black old timers, however, also talked about how important it was for them to see a black face in the pulpit and to hear a black voice proclaiming the gospel. 

"When she gave homilies it was so powerful," said Fannie Cooper. "It was wonderful for us to sit in a pew and identify with her as a black person speaking from our faith's perspective. Since we don't have women priests, it was wonderful that they let her get up and speak. She loved all of us, but she was special in this way for black folks."

Boblick, who is white, summed up the impact of Weind's race this way: "She had lived the struggle of rejection and discrimination that many of our parishioners have lived . . . so absolutely her race was very effective. Yet for those of us who are not African American and haven't lived through some of those challenges, she was that soul model. There was a devout compelling eloquence to her that touched us, too." 

A painful exit

The ministry honeymoon continued for 12 years. But in 1991, Rev. Edward Braxton, an African American, became the pastor of St. Catherine-St. Lucy. A short time before being installed he attended the Good Friday service on March 29, 1991, which was led by Weind as she had done for several years. An article in the Chicago Reader on Jan. 3, 1992, ran with the headline "A Silenced Woman."

"The word came down from the cardinal: Saint Catherine-Saint Lucy . . . had to be brought into line. To the ambitious new pastor, that meant Sister Teresita Weind had to be put in her place," it read.

Braxton had called the chancery office downtown and complained that a woman should not be leading the liturgy if an ordained priest was present. The Reader article went on to say, "Auxiliary Bishop Thad Jakubowski . . . called the pastor of the parish [Rev. Carolan] who then informed Sister Weind that the higher authorities agreed: she could not preside at the Good Friday service or any other formal church service when a priest was present. Women have their place in the church, they said, but this is not one of them."

Braxton officially became the pastor in July and Teresita left soon after he arrived. Most of the ministries she loved and, according to most parishioners, was gifted to do, were taken from her and from the parish.

"It was extremely painful, embarrassing and ugly," said Teresita. "The National Catholic Reporter did a full story on me, and they did not mince words. It was black on black. People were happy that an African American was going to be the pastor here, but he was not the right person for it, so it was painful. I regret what he did because he divided this parish and it was not divided before he came," she said in an interview last week.

The experience became an opportunity for the girl from a single parent family to find out what she was made of, how much she had matured. "It set me down into the roots of who I am," she said, "into that place where I had to believe that I am a good person, because Braxton had stripped me of everything that I was doing. I had to go deeper than what I was doing to who I am and the grace was there to go that deep.

"My faith is other than the hierarchy of this Roman Catholic church," she said, attempting to articulate how she now views the church's hierarchy. "I still love this church. I love it beyond the canonical restrictions that are placed upon women. My faith keeps growing and deepening because my faith is my relationship with God, and Fr. Braxton did not take that away from me.

"I had to look at the church differently," she said.

She had always believed that the church is the people, but her experience with Braxton compelled her to articulate her theology of the church in new ways. "The church is the body of Christ in the sense that it could continue to hold our bonds and our deep commitment to gospel values. A person with ordination can get in the way of how we express it, but he cannot destroy it. I actually believe that you see the body of Christ in the people who are here who serve and share together."

After leaving St. Catherine-St. Lucy, Weind moved to Saginaw, Mich., where Bishop Kenneth Untener appreciated the gifts for ministry in the new arrival and, much like Carolan, gave her a great deal more authority to do ministry than would most in the hierarchy.

Weind's order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, also showed their appreciation for her gifts by electing her recently to a second six-year term as their congregational leader. In that capacity she travels the world to support and encourage the over 1,300 sisters in her order, only stopping at her official residence in Rome to "get a change of clothes and repack my suitcase."

With the weekend's return trip Sept. 5-7 to St. Catherine-St. Lucy, Weind finally brought her ministry full circle. 

On the issues

What do you think about the Vatican's crackdown on the activities of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious which began two years ago? 

"The crackdown is and was unfair, but all of us have been advised not to say anything more than what was in the press release from the LCWR. The reason for that is the LCWR leaders want to be in control of what is released."

How important is women's ordination?

"Actually I have mixed feelings about women's ordination. I would love to administer the sacraments out of justice. When there are not enough ministers of the sacraments in the Catholic Church. On the other hand, I have no real drive to be ordained and to be a part of that hierarchy. Again, I wish that I could simply administer the sacraments without ordination which is the way it was in the beginning of the church. Ministers who presided at the Eucharist were not ordained. That came much later. So my passion is for the sacrament and not for ordination. 

"The parishioners really don't care who's ordained. When I'd arrive at the hospital, especially for a person who is really close to death, the person would say, 'Sister, would you hear my confession?'"

Would you recommend your way of life to a young woman? 

"Without hesitation, yes. Young women do come to me and say, 'I'm trying to discern' but I don't really don't know why most of them do not follow through. We can list all sorts of reasons why they don't, but I think they're more excuses.

"I travel a lot and have lengthy conversations on long flights. Especially women say to me. 'I'd love to live the way you live.' But as we get deeper and deeper into a conversation they reveal that they don't want to give up the things that they have now." 

What is your identity now?

"I'm 72 years old. Over the years I'm growing toward an identity that's more who I am as a gift from God as opposed to who I was because of what I could do and achieve. I'm a little bit down that road than where I was years ago."

To get to the series where all three stories are on OakPark.com, click here.