Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 13, 1994 TAG: 9409140023
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LIZ DOUP KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As a Poor Clare, a cloistered nun, she seldom leaves the dorm-like building where she lives with a dozen others. Their work is to pray - morning, noon and night - then pray again.
Scarcely anyone sees this invisible nun, though thousands now may hear her voice. Sister Frances, in harmony with 59 sisters from 21 states, recorded ``Sisters in Song: Celebrate!'', a just-released album of 13 religious songs, and ``Sisters in Song: Christmas Spirit'', which goes on sale this fall.
Who knows if ``Celebrate'' will strike the same glorious chord as ``Chant,'' the recordings of monks from a Spanish monastery that broke into the top 10 earlier this year, earning millions.
But Sister Frances, 47, hopes the project will succeed in its mission: to help support the retirement of 40,000 Catholic sisters, brothers and priests, all over 70.
What makes Sister Frances' involvement so extraordinary is that at 22, she entered a monastic way of life that dates back to medieval times.
In addition to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, she took a fourth: enclosure.
For most of her religious life, that has meant leaving the monastery only for medical appointments. No vacations. No home visits. No beach. No malls. Until not long ago, ``the grille,'' an aluminum screen with spaces wide enough to slip your hands through, bisected the visitor's room, separating the holy and the secular.
Now that album promotion is a new mission, a photographer is allowed to snap her picture unrestricted, posing her in the sanctuary's bright light. A few weeks ago, a CNN crew filmed her directing the monastery's eight-member choir. And in January and June, she jetted to Los Angeles for recording sessions, and, while there, toured the J. Paul Getty Museum and tapped her toes to a mariachi band at a Mexican restaurant.
This is the life of a cloistered nun?
``I look at it this way,'' says fellow choir member Sister Muriel Ludden, who taught high school English before joining a cloistered community in Jackson, Miss., nearly two years ago. ``God has a great sense of humor.''
Sister Frances explains it another way, sitting in the visitor's room where the grille was replaced six years ago by a less imposing two-foot-high strip of wood stretching the room's length. She sits on one side, visitors on another.
``Music lifts me up and takes me closer to God,'' she says. ``They say that one who sings prays twice.''
Who said?
She pauses.
``Oh, one of those ancient saints,'' she says finally - and laughs.
Despite her veil and white habit, Sister Frances hardly fits the movie-fueled image of the cloistered nun: somber, timid, untouchable. She is, by her own ironic description, outgoing.
``I realize that people don't know what to think when they hear about cloistered sisters in a monastery,'' she says. Even her choral cohorts hardly knew what to expect.
``Sister Muriel said to me, `What do they think we're going to do? Levitate?'''
What she and her sisters do is pray. (A sign by the monastery doorbell reads: ``The Sisters May Be in Prayer. Please Be Patient. The doorbell will be heard.'')
Morning prayer at 6:15. Mass at 7:30. Midmorning prayer at 8:15. From 9 to 11:30, they package altar breads, which are shipped all over Florida. More prayer. Noon meal. Free time from 1:30 to 5 p.m. More prayers before and after a light meal around 5:30. Free time after 8.
The sisters believe that prayer is a powerful engine that moves the unmovable. Rather than teach or nurse a few thousand people in their lives, they believe their prayers, through God, can touch millions.
They pray for the hungry to be fed and the sick to be healed. They pray for love to replace hate and for peace to triumph over war. They pray for individuals who personally request prayers for ailing relatives, safe journeys, obedient children and winning lottery tickets.
``We ask God to do what's best,'' says Mother Christine Kelley, the monastery abbess. ``So far, no one has won [the lottery].''
Did Sister Frances, the woman who has spent half a lifetime praying for others, pray she be chosen for the choir?
``No,'' she answers, smiling. ``But when I learned I'd been selected, I thanked him.''
Today, the need to fund-raise, like the need to pray, is a reality.
The album idea emerged at the California headquarters of the Warren P. Powers Foundation, which finances Catholic endeavors. Someone mentioned the ``Sister Act'' movies, with Whoopi Goldberg as pseudo nun teaching her sisters to make a joyful noise. (Yes, Sister Frances chuckled all the way through the movie.)
About 300 nuns nationwide auditioned by tape. Sister Frances sang the 23rd Psalm and ``Hail, Mary'' in her resonant alto. Sister Muriel, the Ireland-born, former Hialeah teacher, sang one verse of ``Danny Boy.''
The choir recorded both albums at a Catholic church near Los Angeles. Sixty nuns could be intimidating, but not to Frank Brownstead, music director for the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
``Sopranos, `stop' wobbling,'' he'd command. ``I want a `straight' line.'' And: ``Say your S's together or don't say them at all. You sound like vipers.''
A choreographer taught them moves - step up, wave hands, step back - to jazz up ``Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit,'' a la ``Sister Act.''
``Well, they tried anyway,'' says Sister Sara Michael King, project director of Sisters in Song. ``These are sisters, not actresses. Some got into it more than others.''
Still, the album reviews have been good.
``The music is relaxing and inspiring,'' says Sister Eileen Wentzel, vicar for religious for the Archdiocese of Miami, who bought one of the 5,000 sold. ``And it's for a good cause.''
When Sister Frances was a child, her chorus teacher told her to quiet down because her alto was overpowering. Growing up, she liked dances and parties. She had boyfriends. She was neither wallflower nor wild, crazy kid.
On Sundays, everyone except Dad attended church. ``Dad used God's name but never in praise,'' she says, smiling. At 17, she was confirmed at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Fort Lauderdale. As the bishop made the sign of the cross on her forehead, she felt called.
``It was as if God said, `You're mine now,''' she says. ``I got zapped.''
She chose a cloistered life because ``I just knew I wanted to give myself completely to God. Teaching, I'd be giving too much glory to myself and reaching too few people.''
Established in Delray Beach in 1960, Christ the King Monastery is one of only two cloistered communities in Florida. (Another group of Poor Clares began in 1988 in the diocese of Venice near Fort Myers.)
The Poor Clares' story starts in the 13th Century when an Italian woman named Clare Offreducio broke from her monied family to dedicate her life to God and prayer. Seven hundred years after her death, 480 women across the country - 19,000 worldwide - follow her lead.
``You don't come to a monastery to escape,'' Sister Frances says. ``You come because you have a burning desire to give yourself to God.''
Though a monastery can close its doors to the world outside, it can't lock out reality. During the last few years, the sisters have modernized because of dwindling numbers and advancing ages.
Once, they numbered 18. Now, 13 Poor Clares, from age 45 to 80, live in the monastery with room for 20.
Once, they wore their habits during waking hours. Now, they wear nurses' uniforms, which are easier to maintain.
Once, they rose to pray at midnight, then at 5:30 a.m. Now, they sleep uninterrupted. ``We needed to balance the realities with our purpose,'' Sister Frances says. ``Is it useful to be walking around like zombies, getting up at midnight and then again at 5?''
Once, they made altar breads to support the monastery. Now, because aging sisters can't handle the task, they buy the bread, then ship to customers - parishes, priests, cruise ships.
Sister Frances does inventory on their new computer. When a glitch erases her work, she calmly vows to learn more about computer quirks.
She does not take God's name in vain. Even now.
by CNB