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HUNTINGTON, Ind. — Thanks to years of preparation, the remaining members of Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters were acceptant, and even hopeful, as they planned to transform their dwindling community in the years remaining until completion.

An assisted living and nursing facility recently built on their grounds near Fort Wayne, Ind., already is home to some of the 35 sisters who are left. Much of the 100-acre property already had been sold to a preservation trust.
But the fate of the nearly century-old motherhouse was bleak.

The congregation, known as the Victory Nolls, had spent more than a year trying to find a buyer without success. Eventually they gave up and prepared to deconstruct it and sell their remaining land to ACRES Land Trust, a northeast Indiana preservation nonprofit they sold much of their property to several years ago.

But when they informed neighbors and community leaders of their plan, the mayor called and asked if the sisters would be open to another option.

“Of course!” replied Sister Mary Jo Nelson, the congregation’s president. Soon, the mayor, the judge overseeing the county drug court and the head of community corrections were touring the campus, and last October, the sale was finalized: The complex now houses the court working to keep people convicted of drug offenses out of the prison system.

“It’s a restorative program that gives healing, skill building and therapy to people addicted to drugs,” Sister Mary Jo told Global Sisters Report. “They’re low risk, high need. They don’t need to be in jail, but they need to be in a program.”

She declined to give the price, but said the building was “basically a gift” to the community corrections program. The sisters rent office space and residential areas in the building for “practically nothing,” she added.

Sister Ginger Downey, general secretary, said the sisters backed the idea of selling the building to community corrections and were glad it wouldn’t be torn down. Completed in 1925, the building’s Spanish Mission style reflects the congregation’s missionary work in the Southwest and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Why wouldn’t we give this a chance?” Sister Ginger said. “And this saves the building, which the biggest thing was the chapel. That’s a sacred space where they made their vows.”

Sister Mary Jo said learning to let go of buildings was not just freeing, but a reminder of what matters.

“We are the buildings. We are the structure. We are the essence of this life,” she said. “The buildings were the container, but the container now is too big.”

It is a process congregations across the United States are going through: Communities are putting their land into preservation trusts or similar structures to protect them from development; they are selling or converting buildings to create long-term care facilities for aging sisters and sometimes laypeople; they are downsizing to become more efficient or reduce their environmental impact; some are selling land and buildings to pay for unfunded healthcare needs.

Others, like the Victory Nolls, are going further, working to transform their assets into engines of change.

In some ways, sisters’ efforts to transform unneeded assets is not new. Congregations have been undertaking projects such as converting buildings on their campuses into affordable senior housing for years.

But there are two forces at work that are creating more urgency. Societal factors such as the nation’s racial reckoning, income inequality and social polarization are encouraging religious congregations to do more than simply protect their land from development as declining numbers and aging members are pushing more congregations to prepare for completion.

“I think that more communities are transitioning or divesting of land and buildings than in the past and there is more and heightened attention to that type of activity,” Sister Mary Pellegrino, a Sister of St. Joseph of Baden, Pa., said in an email to Global Sisters Report. “In addition, community demographics and finances are increasing the sense of urgency to address the best use or disposition of tangible capital assets like land and buildings.”

Sister Mary is a former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and now is a senior vice president at the financial and accounting firm Plante Moran, where she assists religious communities with financial and ministry planning.

The sense of urgency is real. Statistics shared by LCWR show that one-third of U.S. congregations have fewer than 50 members and eight in 10 women religious are age 70 and older. And while most communities have enough members for leadership and chapters through 2025, that number is expected to drop significantly soon thereafter.

Aging membership and declining vocations also are taking a toll. As many as 300 of the 420 U.S. institutes of women religious are in their last decades of existence, the LCWR reported in its April 2019 newsletter.

Many congregations are “rightsizing,” said Sister Stephanie Still, a member of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is executive director of the National Religious Retirement Office at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“They may be smaller in numbers, they don’t need everything anymore, they may be changing how they’re delivering their healthcare. What you’re seeing is planning for the future,” Sister Stephanie said.

The sale of convents will have to help pay for healthcare and retirement costs for many congregations because so few have enough money to pay for it. The National Religious Retirement Office reported that of the 531 congregations of men and women religious providing information, only 27 were adequately funded.

So while sisters may not like selling to a developer, many have little choice. Financial need as well as local zoning and municipal planning constraints play a significant role in determining the use and disposition of land and property assets, Sister Mary noted.

For those who have choices, the idea that their land and buildings can become agents of change is a powerful one.

When the three-member presidency of the LCWR apologized in August during the organization’s annual assembly for women religious’ role in racism and prayed for forgiveness, Sister Linda Romey, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pa., said in her response that the land and buildings sisters are divesting of could be a sort of reparations for those sins.

“Rather than ‘completing’ our mission, we create new inroads by fulfilling our mission in finding ways to return our land and/or resources to those from whom they were taken or to whom they were denied — Indigenous and Black communities — and let our story come full circle, come to ‘full’-fill Gospel justice,” Sister Linda said. “Community land trusts, alternative economy models, and land back efforts are already growing all around us. ... Our faithfulness demands acts of repentance, reparation and re-creation.”

An example of what is possible is a collaboration between the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, New York, and the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, an Indigenous woman-led cooperative, kelp hatchery and regenerative ocean farm based on Long Island. The Shinnecock will use the former coastal retreat center land the sisters own in the Hamptons to farm kelp, which will help restore Shinnecock Bay, provide a source of income for the tribe and continue their centuries-long connection to the sea.

It’s not only sisters who recognize the potential for change these assets hold.

Catholic Charities USA has created a guide to converting surplus church property into affordable housing. One example cited describes how the former convent of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in Spokane, Wash., has become home to 75 apartments for homeless families and individuals.

In Indiana, Sister Lucille Martinez, Victory Noll vice president, said having the motherhouse become home to a community corrections program and the congregation preparing for its completion are just new doors God has opened. Religious life has never been about buildings or land or numbers, Sister Lucille said, it’s about the life.

“It’s part of the dynamic everyone goes through. You have to let go,” she said. “Now we have no outside ministries, we have no buildings, but we have each other.”

Stockman is a national correspondent for Global Sisters Report. This story was originally published in Global Sisters Report, a project of National Catholic Reporter. The website is http://globalsistersreport.org.

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