She made her first profession of vows in 1955 and her final profession in 1958. She taught in West Virginia and Illinois before coming to Columbus permanently, but also spent time in the city from 1963-65 as a teacher at St. Timothy School. She joined the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus because members of that order had taught her in Wheeling. The order was founded in Aachen, Germany, in 1844. Seven of its sisters came to the United States in 1923 to serve in West Virginia at the request of Wheeling Bishop John Swint.
The order eventually expanded into Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, and at one time had enough sisters in the Diocese of Columbus to form Our Lady of Bethlehem Convent, which was founded on Nov. 23, 1956, at the site where the school of the same name is located.
The order, which will soon move its motherhouse from the Netherlands back to Aachen, has more than 500 members in 12 nations of Europe, South America, and southeast and central Asia, and has experienced particular growth in Indonesia, Colombia, Latvia, and Peru.
In the United States, its numbers have dwindled to the point that it has three members remaining in this country – Sister Mary Thomasina; Sister Mary Goretti Campbell, PCJ, who lives at the Mohun Health Care Center in Columbus; and Sister Anna Veronica Mooring, PCJ, of Parkersburg, W.Va.
“There aren’t many of us left here, but we haven’t been forgotten,” Sister Mary Thomasina said. “Our superior comes here nearly every year to visit the three of us. This year was an exception because of the move to Aachen.”
Sister Mary Thomasina said she had a desire to enter religious life from the time she was in grade school.
“From first grade on, I’d stay after school to be around the sisters and do things like carry their satchels and clean the chalkboards. I’d stay until the bus came to pick them up every day and take them back to their convent in Benwood,” near Wheeling, she said.
“But I was a very reticent child. My shyness kept me from opening up to people and saying I wanted to be a sister, even to my parents.They couldn’t see me doing this, especially my dad. He didn’t think I could persevere.”
Instead, she went to work in the packing, sewing, and payroll departments of a clothing factory, staying there until a trip to the University of Notre Dame changed her life.
“My cousin Alfred was at Notre Dame, and on a visit to Michigan with other cousins, they said ‘Let’s go see Alfred,’ as Notre Dame wasn’t that far,” she said.
“So I went with them and my two sisters to Notre Dame and ran into two sisters who taught me. I recognized them and we started talking and writing back and forth. Eventually, I spent a day at their convent, and that made up my mind. I was never happy anywhere else until I met those sisters, and I don’t think I would have been happy doing anything else.”
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“From the time I joined the order, I have grown in my awareness of God’s presence in my life,” Sister Mary Thomasina said. “I have trusted God to guide me through all that has been, and I will continue to trust him in all that is yet to be."
Posted with permission from the Catholic Times, official newspaper for the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio.