The Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, has gone through a lot in the last couple years, with severe restrictions, segregation and suppressions of traditional Latin Masses, plus a ban on all other sacraments by diocesan priests.
But the good priests and the laity carry on, filling the gyms, attics and parish halls where the TLM is allowed, and rearranging their lives to comply with three parishes that have temporary indults for the TLM with a condition that once a month we must go elsewhere for the traditional liturgy.
One example of marching forward can be found with traditional vocations. In a front-page article of the new Arlington Catholic Herald, the diocesan newspaper, a feature on all of the women religious from Arlington who have entered the Benedictines of Mary can be found.
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Although it would have been nice of the diocesan paper to include the words Latin Mass -- or even Latin -- at least once in the article, it is still a positive action to have a front-page article about a flourishing Latin Mass-based order of sisters.
Continue to pray for the women religious in traditional Latin Mass orders, including the Benedictines of Mary. They keep expanding as a result of your prayers and generosity.
Some excerpts from the article are below. You may read the entire piece and enjoy photos here.
Missouri-based Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles attract Virginia vocations
After 50 years with the Oblates of Providence in Baltimore, Sister Wilhelmina founded the Benedictine order in Pennsylvania in 1995 when she was 70 years old. In 2006, the sisters moved to Kansas City, by which time they numbered approximately a dozen. There are more than 70 sisters in the order today.
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Nine of the sisters come from the Arlington diocese, the most from a single diocese. Seven of them helped establish the daughter house in Ava. These sisters did not know each other before joining, except for a pair of biological sisters at the Gower abbey. They said the diocese’s traditional liturgy helped pave the way for their love of the Benedictines of Mary’s deeply rooted spirituality and monastic life.
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“It’s very much a supernatural, a spiritual relationship,” Father (Paul) Scalia said. The Benedictines of Mary “are a great blessing to the church: the witness of their way of life, the praying for priests, the sense of the sacred, these are all gifts to the church, and whether or not a person goes and experiences that directly, these benefit everybody.”
The sisters are also famous for producing best-selling recordings of Gregorian chant and hymns. Sister Giovanna, formerly Vayla Lamarra, previously ran the traditional Schola at St. Rita Church in Alexandria. “St. Benedict really understood the human person,” she said, all the dimensions of the person, the spiritual and the natural life, and his rule reflects that deep understanding. She joined the order in the fall of 2023 and became a novice Sept. 26.
