Newspaper Page Text
J ► .
if 3 *
1
PAGE 5 — The Georgia Bulletin, February 15,1990
50th Jubilee Celebrated In Blairsville
BY RITA McINERNEY
The last three years have been fulfilling for Sister
Rosemary Wickham, OSF. who came to north Georgia
after 45 years as a teacher and principal in California, Il
linois and Iowa.
On Sunday, Feb. 4, with the people of St. Francis of Assisi
Church in Blairsville, she celebrated her 50th anniversary
as a Sister of St. Francis of the Holy Family.
During the liturgy celebrated by Glenmary Father Ed
Gorny, pastor of St. Francis and St. Paul the Apostle in
Cleveland, she renewed her religious vows and then spoke
briefly to the congregation. Her life is different with them,
she said. Living as a Franciscan sister, teacher and prin
cipal for so many years, it was not always easy to make
connections with lay people.
“When you talked to people you were still a principal. It
was never like that here in the mountains. When I came
here, I just became one of you.”
Members of her family mingled with her church family at
the reception after Mass. Visiting her for the golden jubilee
celebration were her sisters. Sister Jean Wickham, also a
Franciscan from Dubuque, and Helen McClain, and their
brother. Jay Wickham, of Dubuque.
Attracting attention was the large bulletin board display,
“Through the Years With Sister Rosemary." Pictures bor
rowed from albums recalled the jubilarian’s life from
childhood to the present.
A wreath-enclosed photo of Sister Rosemary in the pre-
Vatican II habit drew amazed comment from those un
familiar with such garb.
Pope Calls Young
Open To Vocations
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Young people today are
as capable as ever of accepting a religious vocation,
said Pope John Paul II.
“The hope is that they know how to receive and
follow the invitation of Christ,” he told participants in
a Feb. 9 symposium on vocations to the consecrated
life, sponsored by the Italian bishops’ conference.
“I think that the capacity to be dedicated to Jesus
has not been diminished in the men and women of to
day,” he said.
“Young men and women, in feeling a profound
need for truth, justice, love, solidarity, are potential
ly disposed to live to its depths the experience of
religious life,” he added.
Encouraging vocations is a fundamental activity of
the entire church, especially people who have ac
cepted their vocations, he said.
Later in the afternoon. Sister Rosemary talked about her
early years in Catholic education and her pastoral ministry
today. The first few months in Blairsville "I just felt my
way.” Father Bob Poandl, then pastor, was reassuring.
“You’ll find your niche,” he told her.
“People asked me to start a Bible group," she said. “I
adapted the Little Rock Scripture Study to fit the people
here. We started here in Hiawassee with eight people, in dif
ferent homes. In a few weeks there were 15 people."
The Hiawassee people told the people in Blairsville and a
Bible group was started there.
“People here are so accepting of new ideas. They want to
be challenged. They want to learn and grow as Christians,”
Sister Rosemary says.
“You’re very aware that you’re affecting people s lives.
Many come from big parishes and never had sisters visiting
them in their homes."
“The beauty of the mountains and the beauty of the peo
ple” combine to make her new ministry enjoyable,
although she does admit that the mountains are a long way
from home and family in Iowa. The visit from her sisters
and brothers, and traveling with them to Florida was a
happy prelude to the celebration at St. Francis.
On June 17 she will celebrate with seven other golden
jubilarians at the motherhouse. Mount St. Francis, in Dubu
que.
Fifty years ago, as Sister Perpetua, she began teaching in
the Iowa Catholic school system, for 12 years in Petersburg
and Pocahontas; then she was sent to Crescent City, Calif.,
as the first principal of a new Catholic school.
Here she was able to involve herself totally in the school
year-round since visits home were once in seven years in
the pre-Vatican II days. During summers, she and the other
sisters took courses in new teaching methods and she im
plemented teaching of the new math.
From this assignment, enhanced by the beauty of the
ocean and the redwood forests, she was presented with a
new challenge as principal of Corpus Christi, a school in a
Chicago inner city black neighborhood.
She helped implement an “Art in the Street” program in
the Chicago ghetto. Through the program, young children,
teenagers and the elderly were introduced to the richness of
art by Franciscan seminarians and sisters of her congrega
tion working in teams throughout the inner city.
After five years in Chicago, she returned to Iowa with a
varied background in Catholic education. By that time she
was using her baptismal name, Rosemary, instead of
Perpetua.
She was assigned as a teaching principal at a school in
western Dubuque. Serving as principals in the same school
district were two other Wickhams. Sister Jean and younger
brother Tom.
Arcadia, Iowa, was her final school assignment. “I
preferred to be both principal and teacher,” she admitted.
“And when new things came along I liked to try them out.
Teachers do accept what you say if you also do it yourself.”
PARISH THANKS — Sister Rosemary
Wickham, OSF, opens one of her gifts from the
parish, a sewing machine. She also received an
electric typewriter.
While in Arcadia she took part in a writing workshop and
then “Got all the kids writing.” It was a heady experience
for both the students and the teachers.
In her final Arcadia year she prepared for a new assign
ment then still unknown, by taking a weeklong course on
the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. Leaving teaching
in rural Iowa after 17 years was easier for her when her
order was able to "get one of our own sisters to replace
me.”
Then, when she came to the north Georgia mountain
assignment, she replaced Sister Lene Rubley, who had been
her student early in her teaching years. “I had to follow in
her footsteps.” she remarked with a smile.
Her first visit in Blairsville was over the 1986 Christmas
season. She liked the people of St. Francis of Assisi and the
mountain area and later applied for the post of pastoral
assistant being vacated by Sister Lene.
She came to stay in August, 1987. Since that time she has
enjoyed working and socializing with the people in
Hiawassee. Blairsville and Cleveland. She enjoys being
close to na’ture and the chance for rafting and white water
canoeing the area offers.
Most of all, she is overwhelmed by the outpouring love
and acceptance shown by her church community.
EWTN Broadcasts In Italy
THE A BOWMAN BOARD — Bishop John Ricard, auxiliary bishop in
Baltimore, Mary Lou Jennings and her husband, Lenny, take part in a
meeting of the board of the Thea Bowman Foundation in Atlanta.
j00k6.
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Mother
Angelica has expanded into Italy and will
begin broadcasting shortwave radio pro
grams into Eastern Europe in about six
months, she told Catholic News Service.
The broadcasts, from Olgiata, a town 30
miles north of Rome, will be beamed
through the recently established radio
division of the Eternal Word Television
Network, which the nun founded in 1981 at
her monastery in Birmingham, Ala.
The Olgiata studio is directed by Franco
Quintilli, vice president of Eternal Word
Radio Network, Mother Angelica said.
The radio network also will broadcast in
to Africa in about a year and a half, when
the station is fully operational, she said.
The network’s plans also call for a se
cond studio to broadcast via shortwave
from the United States throughout North,
South and Central America, she said.
In a telephone interview from Birm
ingham, Mother Angelica, a Poor Clare
Sister of Perpetual Adoration, spoke about
the developing radio network four days
after returning from Olgiata.
Eternal Word Radio Network is much
smaller than Vatican Radio, which broad
casts to dozens of countries throughout the
world from the Vatican, she said.
“Vatican Radio is news and documen
taries,” Mother Angelica said. “Ours is
just matters of spirituality and prayer.”
Thea Bowman Foundation Meets
A foundation named for
Franciscan Sister Thea
Bowman is in formation,
trying to establish a
scholarship fund to help in
ner city Catholic schools
and to assist young black
children to obtain a
Catholic education.
The second meeting of
the foundation’s board of
directors was held in Atlan
ta in January and a third
meeting is to be held at the
University of Notre Dame
in April. Archbishop
Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, is
chairman of the board,
which also includes the
presidents of Boston Col
lege and Notre Dame and
the Catholic University of
America.
Sister Thea Bowman,
Franciscan Sister of
Perpetual Adoration, is an
educator and speaker who
has inspired thousands, in
cluding the bishops of the
U.S. to greater efforts on
behalf of the black com
munity. The foundation is
the brainchild of Mary Lou
Jennings of Stowe, Vt. and
has been supported by St.
Michael’s College in
Winooski, Vt.