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Sisters plan advertising campaign to reach more women
by Stephanie Hemphill, Minnesota Public Radio
October 8, 2003

The traditional stone buildings of the St. Scholastica Monastery look out over Duluth and Lake Superior. (MPR Photo/Stephanie Hemphill)

There are half as many Catholic nuns today as there were 40 years ago. The median age of nuns is 69. Many religious communities around the country are trying some unusual approaches to attract new members. A group of sisters in Duluth is one of them. They're advertising.

Duluth, Minn. — Every Sunday afternoon, the bell calls the sisters to prayer at the Benedictine Monastery of St. Scholastica.

The women come from their rooms, down a long corridor lined with windows. The afternoon sun pours in. The women are dressed for Sunday prayer and dinner. They wear suits - some are dark and a little old fashioned; others are bright blue, pink, and purple. Most of the women have short grey hair, and only a few are wearing veils.

Some of the women lean on rolling walkers; a few zip along on electric carts they park in the corridor outside the chapel. There's a motto painted on one of the carts. It says, "Wide open 'til you see God, then brake."

	Sisters at Sunday prayer service

One-hundred-thirty-five sisters live here at the St. Scholastica Monastery. Sunday prayer is a high point in their week. Some of them are away at work or on vacation. Twenty of them are in the nursing wing of the monastery. But they say wherever they are, during prayer times they feel connected to each other.

The Benedictine Monastery in Duluth is more than 100 years old. The sisters here founded the College of St. Scholastica. They founded a health care system that has 60 clinics in several states. One of the sisters was the CEO of that system for years. Other sisters are college professors, one is a massage therapist.

Sister Nancy Flaig, a chaplain at the biggest hospital in Duluth, says her work can be stressful, but when she comes home, she only feels the love and support of her sisters.

"And I know sometimes people leave stressful jobs and go home to more family responsibilities and stress," she says. "And the rhythm of my life is that I come home to communal support and prayer. It's built into my life."

There are many reasons why fewer women are becoming nuns these days. Sister Nancy says one reason is nuns and their way of life are nearly invisible. Girls in elementary school don't have a sister in a black habit tapping them on the shoulder and suggesting they should think about becoming a nun.

So Sister Nancy is working with an ad agency to make the monastery more visible. They created a series of advertisements.

The ads ran last spring on the radio, on TV, and in newspapers. There's even been a billboard on Interstate 35. Sister Nancy calls it the branding stage of the campaign. It featured different sisters with different jobs and hobbies - just like ordinary people.

	Sisters Nancy Flaig and Mary Rochefort

Sister Nancy says the ads were designed to counteract the stereotype of what it's like to be a nun.

"And maybe part of the old image was if you had a dream and a vision, you had to give that up if you wanted to serve God and serve the people of God," she says. "And what we're trying to say is, that's part of God's creation of you, so you don't have to give that up. But it becomes part of your whole life, as well as rooting for the Packers and the Vikes and going to movies and skiing and biking and everything that everyone else does and enjoys in life."

But ads inviting women to join a monastery have to do more than reassure them they can still have hobbies. Scott Appleby is a professor at Notre Dame. He says the lifestyle just doesn't appeal to many women anymore.

"Nuns, sisters are asked to live a chaste, celibate lifestyle, to give everything to service of God through the religious order," he says. "And that flies in the face of all the cultural trends."

But Appleby says there are some women who would want to devote their lives to service and God, if they learned more about what it's really like to do that.

Sister Mary Rochefort is working on the advertising project too. She says reaching those women is more important than boosting the numbers at the monastery.

"What's important to me is that women who are looking for a way to serve and a way to find meaning and purpose in their life come to realize that this is one place where they could do that," she says.

	Sister Linda Wiggins

Sister Linda Wiggins leads the way into her favorite part of the monastery, a courtyard garden.

Sister Linda is one of the newer members of the community. She came here seven years ago. She has white hair and bifocals.

Sister Linda is renovating the formal garden next to the chapel. It's surrounded by the high stone walls of the monastery, and Sister Linda says it's warm here in the summer, but it takes forever for the snow to melt at the end of winter.

"But, I love Duluth and I love this monastery," she says. "It's very beautiful. And it's very enriching to have such surroundings every single day. I feel very fortunate."

"What's important to me is that women who are looking for a way to serve and a way to find meaning and purpose in their life come to realize that this is one place where they could do that." - Sister Mary Rochefort

Sister Linda was always religious; she remembers her mother playing religious songs on the piano. She married and raised two daughters. Later she divorced, earned a doctorate, and taught college. Her daughters grew up and had their own lives.

"I lived in a rather nice house, I had nice clothes and a cute little car that I drove around," she says. "But that was a life that was just me. When you move here, you have to give up that 'me,' and become someone who cares more about others.

Sister Linda says sometimes that's easier said than done, but it always feels worthwhile.

She directs a program that encourages minority and low-income students to go to graduate school.

She says living at the monastery is like walking through history and making history at same time.

The "branding stage" of the advertising campaign is over now, and the next phase will start in a few months. The next series of ads will actually try to recruit women. The sisters at the St. Scholastica Monastery hope more women like Sister Linda Wiggins will join them.

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