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Eleven Spanish nuns who were executed in Madrid in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War were beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 10.
Maybe you connect that strife in Spain with Ernest Hemingway and his classic "For Whom the Bell Tolls" or maybe you plowed through two volumes of "The Cypresses Believe in God." And now you find it interesting that some nuns who were martyred during that sad time may become saints.
But there's more in the way of connection. For some retired nuns living in Tampa, Fla., the beatification of the Spanish nuns was an occasion of high excitement. You see, seven of the martyrs were members of their congregation, the Visitation Sisters. So excited were the three Visitation Sisters at Rocky Creek Retirement Village on West Waters in Tampa that they wrote to me about it.
How come a long letter to Catholic New York? Connection: Three of the 70-some religious women and men who live at Rocky Creek are identified as "transplanted New Yorkers"--three Visitation Sisters with a history of their own. Sister Joseph Marie Robert, Sister Rose Veronica Mangiapanella and Sister Mary Pauline Baulis came from the Visitation Monastery in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Sister Joseph Marie was the last superior of the monastery when it closed in 1980. The monastery became the first building housing St. John Neumann Residence, the house of formation for men preparing to study for the priesthood.
There's a photo in our files of Sister Joseph Marie. She's standing there wearing a corsage as New York's Retired Coadjutor Archbishop John J. Maguire blesses a plaque honoring the Visitation Sisters in Neumann Residence, which had been their monastery. The photo was taken in October 1982. There isn't very much else in our files about the Visitation Sisters, except many clippings from CNY's predecessor, The Catholic News, about the annual Novena to the Sacred Heart at their monastery. The one in 1968 was conducted by Graymoor Father Daniel Egan, hero of the book "The Junkie Priest."
There is quite a lot in our files about the monastery's second life, which began about the same time that Catholic New York began. (Our first issue was Sept. 27, 1981.) They added a wing to the monastery not long after it became the preseminary. Neumann was an idea that caught on nicely. Slightly more than 400 men of college age or older have gone through its program, and more than half have gone on to study for the priesthood. Many are now priests.
A powerful amount of praying was done within the walls of the monastery that became Neumann. I like to think it hangs gently in the atmosphere as men strive for the holiness called for in priesthood. The Visitation Sisters used to have boarding schools and retreat houses. There's only one left, and I don't know how many members they still have. We do know of three, now, who feel a kinship with those brave women who were shot to death simply because they were nuns.
They wrote to us that Visitation Sisters have always looked for and followed the will of God in all things. "This is what we are trying to do during our retirement years at Rocky Creek, and that is what our Spanish nuns did so dramatically by giving their lives for the love of Christ," they said.
Sweet, isn't it? Some holy women who shed their blood for their faith more than six decades ago in a country across the Atlantic Ocean are linked with some retired nuns in Florida who prayed and worked in a monastery in the Bronx and feel forever linked with members of the Church in New York.
