Editor’s note: As the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, Catholic historian Reba Luiken is devoting her columns to stories of women — some well-known and others less so — who have impacted its history. The following column addresses the influence of the Oblate Sisters of Providence.
In September 1945, three Black Catholic religious sisters arrived in St. Paul from Baltimore to Catholic fanfare.
Archbishop John Gregory welcomed them with a Mass at St. Peter Claver in downtown St. Paul and religious sisters from across the archdiocese came together to host a tea in their honor the following week. Newspapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul covered the event. The new arrivals were members of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the oldest American order of sisters and the first community of Black sisters in the United States. They had come to serve in the interracial parish. Among them was Sister Celine, who had 18 years of experience as a teacher and sister in Baltimore.
In her first few years in St. Paul, Sister Celine’s ministry was focused on developing a parish education program for children and adults of St. Peter Claver in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul, where a new school and church were planned. Occasionally, she and the other sisters would also cross the river to then-St. Martin and St. Leonard of Port Maurice parishes, which also had substantial numbers of Black parishioners. By the fall of 1950, Sister Celine had become Mother Celine. She also became the first principal of the newly opened St. Peter Claver school, where she taught alongside seven members of her order.
Two years later, she became mother superior of a new convent at St. Leonard of Port Maurice in Minneapolis, where she took up residence across the street in the former priest’s house with two more sisters who had recently arrived from Baltimore. She left the work at St. Peter Claver in the hands of her sisters. At St. Leonard there was no school, so she led other classes for children and converts and made house calls. To support their mission work, the Oblates relied on the women’s auxiliary at St. Leonard, who called themselves the Oblate Helpers. These women donated a new car to the sisters so they could continue their mission work across Minneapolis.
The work of the Oblate Sisters in Minneapolis expanded over the 1950s and 1960s to meet the needs of the community and utilize the skills of the sisters. Sister Beninga arrived in 1955 and led the music and choir programs at St. Leonard for a year or two before returning to Baltimore. She was a lifelong friend of singer Marian Anderson and a gifted accompanist in her own right. Sister Elsa, a Black Cuban sister, taught summer school in Spanish at nearby Incarnation School. Although St. Leonard never had its own school, the Oblates living there taught at Incarnation in the 1950s and 1960s, supporting the teaching ministry of the Dominican sisters. By the early 1970s, the number of Catholic school children and Catholic religious sisters were shrinking, and all the Oblate sisters were called back to Baltimore to serve in other missions in 1975, including Mother Celine.
Luiken is a Catholic and a historian with a doctorate from the University of Minnesota.
