Nun cherishes a century of memories

"I like to win, because I get money," she declares gleefully. "Thirty cents each time we win. If you win three times, you have [almost] a dollar. Yesterday, I won twice!"

Such excitement over a few cents is only natural. Sister Marguerite sends her winnings to needy folks who write "begging letters" to her home at Kenwood Convent in Albany -- a continuation of her life's work as a treasurer for her order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

Did we mention that her life has lasted an entire century?

Centenarian

Her mother, an American, was a convert to Catholicism who was baptized just before marrying August. The family spent much of Sister Marguerite's childhood traveling with her and her two elder sisters to the various places where Mr. Benziger had commissions.

"My father was a celebrated portrait painter," boasted Sister Marguerite. "He painted Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, Pope Pius XII in Rome. We went to many places, but we lived in New York [City]. He had these big studios with double windows."

'Over the pond'

"By steamer, it took eight days" to cross the Atlantic, Sister Marguerite recalled. "I crossed the ocean 22 times -- 17 times by ship and the others by airplane. By airplane, it took less than a day."

From 1910-1917, the future nun attended Sacred Heart School on Madison Avenue in Albany. As a boarder at Kenwood Academy in 1917, she realized that an interest in religious life was rising within her. Or, as she put it: "I got a vocation!"

The young woman had witnessed the "Ceremony of Clothing," when postulants to the Sacred Heart order donned wedding gowns to symbolize being "brides of Christ," then changed into the religious habits they would wear from then on.

"That made a great impression on me," she said. "They came in dressed in a white wedding gown, went to the altar and the priest put a white veil on them."

Entering convent

However, the family reluctantly consented. In 1922, soon after Sister Marguerite made her first vows, she contracted tuberculosis and spent six months recovering in a sanitorium in Switzerland.

"It was a Catholic sanitorium," she recalled. "There were three Masses at the same time on three different altars! This was before Vatican II."

Memories

In her memoirs (see excerpts accompanying this article), Sister Marguerite wrote of the horrors of living through the Nazi occupation of her adopted country, of "go[ing] to sleep in Austria on March 12, 1938, and find[ing] out on March 13 that I had awakened in Germany. And all this without leaving my room."

She still doesn't like to speak of World War II. Her only comment aside from advising people to read her book, "Austria Nazified: Years of Terror 1938-1955," was that the war was "awful! They were against nuns, against everything religious. That Hitler was a devil!"

Sister Marguerite spent 52 of her 80 years of religious life in Austria. Her memoirs reveal stories both horrifying and humorous, from watching her convent taken over as a barracks by less-than-hygienic Moroccan soldiers to hearing of nuns who were raped by Nazis. She survived countless air raids, saw an American plane shot out of the sky and rejoiced when the war was over.

Back to Albany

Today, the elderly nun spends her days praying in a chapel near her room, playing Bingo or hunting up players for a round of canasta. She told The Evangelist she doesn't miss a thing about the past: "I'm only sorry that the nuns aren't in habits any more!"

She's not impressed with today's technology, either. When asked about living through the advent of automobiles, television, heart transplants and moon landings, she retorted, "We always had an automobile. I learned to drive at the same time as my sisters, but my sisters always drove because they were older."

Her words of wisdom for those considering religious life are simple. "If they have a vocation, it's God who gives it to them," she said. "Enter, and they'll be very happy."

As for prayer -- well, that's simple when you're 100, too: "I say the Our Father, the Creed, the Hail Mary, ask Him to help me and pray for those who are sick."

Hearing loss

"You hope you can die soon and get to heaven," she declared. "I hope our Lord will say, `This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.'"

Being 100, "if you're deaf, is a mighty hard thing!" she added.

However, Sister Marguerite soon proved that her sight is as keen as her spirit. Eying Kenwood development director Cathy Taft's attire, she remarked, "You can wear trousers. I just don't like it when the sisters wear trousers!"

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