Family of ‘Miracle Nun’ seeks respect from Catholic church officials

It’s been referred to by some media outlets as “a miracle in Missouri.”

To date, thousands have made the pilgrimage to a remote Missouri abbey in Gower, MO (about 39 miles north of Kansas City) to witness the incorrupt body of an African American nun, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, who died in May 2019 at the age of 95.

Mother Mary Wilhelmina Lancaster was exhumed on April 28, 2023,with the intent of placing her un-embalmed body in the newly completed St. Joseph’s Shrine at Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus. The news of the discovery of her astonishingly well-preserved body has attracted thousands to Gower devoted to paying their respects to the miracle nun.

Unfortunately, according to surviving relatives of Sr. Wilhelmina, that respect has not been extended to them by Catholic Church officials.

In the “Lancaster Family Statement on Sr. Wilhelmina,”released Wednesday, family members noted the significance “of the epic continuation” of the nun’s story but also voiced several matters of discontent.

“We her surviving relatives will not be silent as we comment on what we collectively perceive as some disconcerting interactions we have had with the current curators of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary Queen of the Apostles, the Chaplain of the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus and the Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City, MO–St. Joseph, MO,” the statement read.

Before issuing the public statement, Johnson Lancaster, one of the founders of Progressive Emporium & Education Center and a direct nephew of Sr. Wilhelmina, contacted the St. Louis American to express dissatisfaction with church officials.

The major grievance listed by the family (nieces and nephews) was the untimely way they were notified that Sr. Wilhelmina’s body was disinterred. Claiming that the church violated Missouri and Catholic canon law, the Johnson Lancaster said they weren’t contacted by church officials until May 22, almost three weeks after the body was exhumed.

“There are a host of family members who are in good standing with the Catholic Church,” the statement read, adding: “These family members serve in their own way. They are not to be pushed aside, ignored, and considered less than.”

Families from Kansas City and St. Louis scrambled to converge on Gower on Memorial Day only to be denied, they wrote in the statement, “a private moment with our aunt.”

Instead, they added, they were only invited to place flowers around her body before the procession and re-interment. After additional debate, the family said they were granted 45 minutes alone with their aunt.

However, the insults and disrespect did not stop there, the family insists.

They note how Sr. Wilhelmina traveled to Africa and was aware of how “drums are part of the culture and a symbol/sign to show reverence and a gift to the person.” Yet when one of the (unnamed) nephews, a noted St. Louis musician, offered his “gift of drums,” he was interrupted by a priest who labeled his playing “nonsense.” 

The priest, the family statement asserted, surrounded himself and the drummer with Clinton County, MO sheriff’s deputies” who did not allow the nephew “to commune with his aunt…and was not allowed to enter the church where she was being laid to rest.

“For an order that is supposed to be welcoming and open to prayer their actions were rude, unwarranted and un-Christian,” the statement read.

The family acknowledged Sr. Wilhelmina’s St. Louis roots. Born to Oscar Lee and Ella Madden Lancaster in 1924, she was the oldest girl in a family of five children. Wilhelmina, the statement continued, “spent her early formative years” growing up in the historic Ville Neighborhood” at 4315 Garfield Avenue at Pendleton. The Family, Lancaster said, still owns the house. 

According to the family, their aunt chose to become “a Bride of Christ” and entered the convent in 1941 at the age of 16, becoming an Oblate nun in 1944. This was during the Jim Crow era, when African Americans attended segregated Catholic Churches. Sr. Wilhelmina was encouraged to join the Oblates, one of several all-Black convents active at the time. She was called to start a new order that was approved by the Church and began the Order Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, Our Lady of Ephesus.

Sister Wilhelmina founded the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, Our Lady of Ephesus in 1995 when she was 70 years old. Originally founded in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the convent was moved to Gower where it is now located.

The sisters of the convent have found fame in the recordings of a dozen albums-four of which topped the Billboard Classical charts. A new $20 million convent, the Monastery of Saint Joseph, is being constructed four hours south of Gower, in Ava, Missouri. Some members of the original community will move to the new location.

The Lancaster Family expressed surprise at the “evident/indiscreet and exploitative monetizing” of Sister Wilhelmina’s legacy. When visiting Gower on Memorial Day, they noted how the nun’s biography, musical CDs, devotion cards and other merchandise were sold just "20 feet" from where their aunt's body was laid in the basement of the Abbey.

“That is unacceptable,” the family wrote, adding: “Our Aunt Mary was a person, not a thing to be objectified…”

Ending their statement on a note of reconciliation, the family stated:

“As monumental, glorious, and spiritually mystical the experience is and has been for many as it continues to develop and unfold; we the family, nieces, nephews, and blood relatives are left to experience the moment under the haze and clouds of the previous treatment, lack of regard, and minimization of respect. 

“We pray that harmony will be restored, and justice will prevail.”