Editor’s note: As the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, Catholic historian Reba Luiken has devoted her columns to stories of women — some well-known and others less so — who have impacted its history. This is the last column in the series that began in January.
In 1982, Sister Joanne Lucid of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was the chaplain in the transplant unit at St. Mary’s Hospital in Minneapolis. She started to notice young, previously healthy adults enter the hospital with a terrible, incurable disease that weakened them and eventually caused them to die. That was not the worst part; social stigma and general paranoia went along with the disease and caused family and friends to abandon the patients. Things were so difficult for Minnesota’s first AIDS patients that at least one wished he would be diagnosed with leprosy instead.
Sister Joanne believed that these were exactly the patients Jesus would have focused his ministry on, and she asked then-Archbishop John Roach if she could do the same. In September 1986, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis established an AIDS ministry. Sister Joanne was its leader, and nine priests worked with the program, volunteering their time to provide spiritual and emotional support to patients and their families.
Some of Sister Joanne’s ministry was in the hospital, but she also supported adult foster homes for AIDS patients and food delivery programs for people struggling with AIDS. Her ministry included training for family, friends and co-workers of AIDS patients so they would be educated with accurate information rather than become prejudiced.
Doctors recognized Sister Joanne’s work as invaluable. They joked that she could be a brand name prescription — they’d like to send every AIDS patient to visit someone like her four times a day. She was able to bring compassion to patients whose cases emotionally drained family members and even doctors. She did this through personal balance. She was a hard worker, but she also loved to enjoy herself on a day off whether antiquing or at Canterbury Park horse racing track in Shakopee.
She had always been adventurous, idealistic and inspired to serve the Church. Growing up in San Francisco, she was taught by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sister Joanne was the child of Irish immigrants and one of three children. She was attracted to the work of the Sisters of Charity, and at 18, she decided it would be a great adventure to jump on a train and go halfway across the country to join them at their motherhouse in Dubuque, Iowa.
Sister Joanne’s journey in caring for AIDS patients did not end when medical treatments that allowed patients to live with HIV arrived in the 1990s. In the Twin Cities, patients living in poverty continued to be the most impacted. Then, she heard about the rapid spread of AIDS in Africa. She knew she had to expand what she was doing.
In 2000, she traveled with four others to South Africa for the International AIDS Conference, and she connected with a community outside of Cape Town where AIDS was spreading quickly. She worked with them to establish a community center to provide care and education about HIV. Sister Joanne shared her experience in the Twin Cities, and she dedicated herself to fundraising, gathering funds from local parish benefits and $1,500 from students at Macalester College in St. Paul to support a new orphanage for children with AIDS. She continued to look for ways to support the sick and outcast at home and across the world.
Sister Joanne has been a Sister of Charity for 69 years and currently lives in Dubuque. She ministered in the archdiocese from 1981 to 2013.
Luiken is a Catholic and a historian with a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. She loves exploring and sharing the hidden histories that touch our lives every day.
