For visiting nuns, Lemont tour a holy order

In theological parlance, they are the Congregation of School Sisters of St. Francis of Christ the King, a Franciscan sisterhood made up of 1,092 members worldwide.

On Tuesday morning, they were both guests of honor and tourists at Mount Assisi Academy, an all-girls high school located on a steep hilltop in Lemont.

A small group of the sisterhood gathered in the Southland this week as part of a celebration of their order’s 140th anniversary worldwide and its 100th year of ministry in America.

For many of the sisters, the visit represented their first time in the United States and the first time in an American Catholic school.

What did they think?

“Beneducate,” said Rev. Mother Natalija Palac, of Grottaferrata, Italy. “Well educated.”

Asked about what messages they send in their ministries — particularly in an ever-modern world overflowing with distractions — Sister Ivanka Mihaljevic, a provincial superior in Bosnia, thought carefully and answered.

“The most important thing is to be yourself,” she said. “To learn from the beginning – and may I say every day – to say ‘yes’ to values and ‘no’ to the things which are not for us.”

Habit-clad nods of approval followed.

Guided by school president K. Tina Donahue and school principal Sister Mary Francis Werner, the group walked through the school hallways and stopped in classrooms, where they snapped photos of students and posed for pics of their own.

Some thumbed through a religion workbook while others marveled at the school’s television studio. Entering the school’s chapel, they automatically fell silent and reverent and prayed the “Hail Mary” in Italian.

Founded in Slovenia in 1869, the School Sisters of St. Francis of Christ the King make their mission one of education.

They’ve expanded that mission the world over, with outreach efforts for the elderly and disabled. The order now has ministries on four continents, including Europe, South America and Africa.

Their U.S. province is headquartered in a convent on the grounds it shares with Mount Assisi Academy.

During their tour, the sisters described their work as “humble” and “low-key,” but said their lessons of faith and service carry across the world.

That sisters from all over the globe were able to come together and celebrate their mission only proves that, and shows “how small th world is,” said Sister Sandra Zorko, who spent most of her career as a teacher at Mount Assisi.

And it shows the global reach of the order that even those well familiar with Mount Assisi and the nuns’ work here might not appreciate.

“They just think we’re on this hill,” she said.