Gulf Pine Catholic

22 Gulf Pine Catholic • November 22, 2024 Sainthood causes for Benedictine sister and disabilities education advocate get US bishops ʼ approval BY MARIAWIERING OSV News ( OSV News ) -- In 1918, when Benedictines in Minnesota gave Anna Cordelia Zervas her religious name, Sister Mary Annella, her moth- er reacted with surprise. “But there is no St.Annella,” she is reported to have said. Her daughter replied: “Then I shall have to be the first one!” Sister Annella’s response may prove truer than she could have possibly known, as a cause for her canonization was presented to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Nov. 12. A separate cause for Gertrude Agnes Barber, a Pennsylvania educator commit- ted to serving children and adults with learning disabili- ties, was also brought forward for the bishops’ consultation. During their fall plenary assembly in Baltimore, the U.S. bishops voted 206 to 7, with 11 abstentions, to support the local advancement of Sister Annella’s cause, and 205 to 6, with 19 abstentions, to support the same for Barber’s cause. Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, Sister Annella’s home diocese, introduced Sister Annella’s cause, while Bishop Edward M. Lohse of Kalamazoo, Michigan, introduced Barber’s cause on behalf of Bishop Lawrence T. Persico of Erie, Pennsylvania. The two women died 74 years apart -- Sister Annella in 1926 after suffering horribly from a rare skin condition, and Barber in 2000, after becoming a national leader and advocate in her field. Postulators for both causes are currently gathering information locally about the two women with plans to prepare a “positio” for the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican. In the Diocese of Crookston, where Sister Annella’s cause for canonization is being investigat- ed, sources are primarily historical, whereas for Barber’s cause in the Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania, people who knew her in life are contributing their memories. Sister Annella was born in 1900 in Moorhead, Minnesota, a growing town along the North Dakota border. She was a devout child, and, according to a biography, “demonstrated a spiritual maturity that set her apart from her peers.” In 1915, a teenaged Zervas gained her pastor’s approval and encourage- ment to enter the Benedictine convent in St. Joseph, Minnesota. She entered as a postulant that year, and four years later she professed her first vows. After her final vows in 1922, she was assigned to teach music and serve as an organist in Bismarck, North Dakota. A short time later, itchy and swelling skin and hair loss -- to the point where her visiting parents did not recognize her -- led her to seek medical treat- ment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The disease progressed, and her parents brought her home to Moorhead in the fall of 1924. “Despite her severe physical suffering, which included violent chills, high temperatures, and pain- ful attacks of itching, scratching, and weeping, her mental faculties always remained intact,” according to a biography. “The pus-like discharge from the skin disease had a sharp, biting, and decayed odor. Her frail body exfoliated between a pint and a quart a day of skin. At one point, she existed on almost no food.” Despite her suffering, Sister Annella remained cheerful, and amid fits of pain, she prayed. “Yes, Lord, send me more pain, but give me strength to bear it,” she reportedly said. She only asked for God’s will to be done. She died on the vigil of the Assumption, Aug. 14, 1926. After a funeral Mass in Moorhead, her remains were buried 160 miles southeast at St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph. Shortly after her death, reports of cures attributed to Sister Annella’s intercession began to circulate, and local devotion to her persisted for decades. However, it took one man’s mysterious encounter and dogged determination to revive contemporary interest in the holy woman. Patrick Norton, a devout Catholic and paint contractor in central Minnesota, was work- ing on a replica of the Lourdes’ grotto in the cemetery of St. Joseph’s Monastery on Oct. 7, 2010 -- the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary -- when he said a sister in full habit approached and began a conversation. After talking a short time, she said goodbye and “disappeared,” he recalled. She never told him her name, but he was struck by her large blue eyes. He later recognized the sister as Sister Annella, and he made it his mission to spread her story. Sister Annella’s suffering “reminds me of the passion of our Lord,” said Norton, 62, who was cared for as an orphaned infant by Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity in then-Bombay, India, before being adopted as a teen into a Connecticut family. After trying to gain traction for Sister Annella’s cause for years, he believes “God opened every door” to make it possible to move forward at this time. In October 2023, Bishop Cozzens announced to a group of Catholics devoted to the nun that he was beginning an inquiry into her life that could lead to a cause for Sister Annella’s canonization. The effort is led by canon lawyers Amanda Zurface, the cause’s postulator, and Msgr. David Baumgartner, president of the newly formed Sister Annella Guild. The guild is charged with advancing Sister Annella’s cause. USCCB FALL24 CAUSE CONSULTATIONS, PAGE 24 Gertrude Agnes Barber is pictured with children in an undated photo in Erie, PA. Barber founded the Barber National Institute for adults and children with intellectual disabilities and behavioral health challenges. Her cause for canonization was presented during the Fall Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held Nov. 11-14. OSV News photo/ CNS file, courtesy Barber National Institute