St. Benedict
Our history starts in Italy, with St. Benedict (480-547 BCE) who founded several monasteries. The monks' lives were centered around Benedict's “Rule,” a way of living as a Christian community. Benedict's sister St. Scholastica, patron of religious women, was his spiritual confidant and an abbess of a women's community. 1500 years later, monastic Benedictine communities around the world still live the wisdom of the Rule, striving for a life of balance through prayer, work, study, and holy leisure, always working to meet the needs of the Church and the people of God.
Swiss Roots
In 1864, St. Gertrude Leupi founded Maria Rickenbach monastery, a women’s Benedictine community devoted to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and charitable works in Switzerland. Ten years later, Sr. Gertrude would lead several sisters to Maryville, Missouri, at the request of Prior Anselm of Engleberg, Switzerland, to minister to German immigrants and their families.
Dakota Territory
In 1874, Bishop Martin Marty, OSB, a Swiss native and the first bishop of Dakota Territory, asked the sisters to provide spiritual support and education to the Native Americans. The sisters settled in Zell, SD, where they built the first monastery on a claim of land that became St. Mary Parish and school. The school and church still stand today.
Sacred Heart, Yankton, SD
The new community needed a foundation from which to grow and so established Sacred Heart Monastery in 1889. Over time, sisters established schools, hospitals, and other services around the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Colorado as the needs of pioneers, immigrants, and Native Americans were made known. By the mid-1950s, the community numbers were approximately 500 religious sisters.
Pioneers in Pierre
In 1958, the sisters of Sacred Heart saw the need to pioneer once more and started to plant the seeds of a new community, becoming Mother of God Monastery. They chose Pierre, SD, at St. Mary Hospital, which the sisters had established in 1899. 136 sisters in various stages of monastic life, from Postulants to fully professed, transferred their “stability” to the new community in the St. Mary hospital chapel before the first prioress, Mother Rosemarie Bierschbach, and Bishop of Sioux Falls, Lambert Hoch on June 15, 1961.
Breaking Ground in Watertown
In 1967, after several years of searching, the Mother of God community found a perfect location two miles south of Watertown to build both Harmony Hill High School for female boarders and a priory for the community. The sisters were blessed to be a part of young women’s lives for seven years, with the school closing in 1974.
Watertown and Beyond...
For over 50 years, the sisters of Mother of God Monastery have carried on the tradition of countless religious sisters before them by ministering near and far as educators from elementary schools to universities; as health care professionals, educators, and innovators; faith formation directors and pastoral associates in parish and diocesan posts; as well as in mental health and social services. The new but never-changing call to follow Christ continues to challenge the community to seek God together as they proclaim the Gospel in new ways through prayer, ministry, and outreach!
