By Sam M. Lucero
Catholic Herald

Sr. Schwalen dies; led Superior nuns through merger

A Mass of Christian burial was celebrated for her at Bethany Convent Chapel on March 7 with Capuchin Fr. Ellis Zimmer, her nephew, presiding and Fr. Philip Heslin, moderator of the curia for the Superior diocese, as homilist. Interment was at Resurrection Cemetery, where she was buried next to her sisters, Veronica and Juliana, also members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Superior.

Born Feb. 5, 1916, to Edward and Julia Ann Von Kuster Schwalen in Clear Lake, Wis., the 10th of 11 children, Gertrude Emma Schwalen joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Superior on Sept. 15, 1934, and took the name Ursula. She received her habit on March 19, 1935, and professed her first vows March 19, 1937. She taught in Catholic schools for 11 years while serving as CCD instructor and music teacher at night.

Schwalen later moved into health care ministry. Along with four other Sisters of St. Joseph, she helped plan for and open Holy Family Hospital in New Richmond in 1950. She served as business manager, but also took on many other responsibilities such as lab technician and receptionist.

After nine years in New Richmond, Schwalen returned to Superior. She served as business manager, assistant administrator and administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital. In addition, she served her religious community as secretary-treasurer and council member.

On June 30, 1984, Schwalen was elected president of the Sisters of St. Joseph. She immediately set out to fulfill her community's mandate that had been given just a few weeks earlier: investigate the possibility of merging with another religious community.

The mandate was a result of a comprehensive five-year study completed in 1984 of the community's finances, personnel, ministries and properties. The study showed that money set aside for the Sisters' retirement was being used to subsidize services at St. Joseph's Hospital.

As a result of the study, the Sisters agreed that they would act on the recommendations given to them. These included:

-- Discontinue ministries which were draining them financially;

-- Give priority to the welfare and care of the Sisters;

-- Sell all non-essential properties;

-- Study the possibility of merging with another religious community.

Schwalen and her fellow officers, Sr. Clare Belisle, vice president, Agatha Quinn, councillor, and Juliana Schwalen, secretary-treasurer, set out to accomplish these goals. St. Joseph's Hospital in Billings Park, which closed in 1975 and was being rented to various programs, was sold in November 1984.

In 1985 Schwalen and her leadership team visited three religious communities that were chosen as possible candidates for amalgamation. Finally, on May 25, 1985, the Sisters held a chapter meeting and reached a near unanimous decision to ask the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province, to accept them into their community.

With the assistance of Bishop Raphael M. Fliss, who helped settle canonical issues involved in the dissolution of the Superior community and amalgamation with the St. Paul community, the Sisters received formal approval from Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life on Feb. 4, 1986. On April 1, 1986, all the documents dissolving the diocesan congregation were signed, making the Superior Sisters officially part of the Carondelet Sisters. By September 1987, the motherhouse known as NOL (Nazareth on the Lake) was closed and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Superior were part of the diocese's history.

In an obituary announcement released by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Schwalen was credited with making this transition period as amiable as possible. "While Ursula's personal struggle must have been as intense as that experienced by the other community members, she never let on.

"It seems so clear that all of her life experience was but a preparation for the call to lead the Nazareth-on-the-Lake community through the most difficult of times into a new and vibrant experience of community," the obituary stated.

Heslin, who served as chaplain for the Sisters of Superior from 1962-1987, occasionally visited Schwalen and the other Sisters after their move to St. Paul. "I used to call her the 'Omega Mother,'" because she was her community's last leader, he said. "I really felt her loss there yesterday (March 7) when she wasn't there (at Bethany Convent) to greet me."

While Schwalen will be remembered for her leadership role with the Sisters of St. Joseph, perhaps her greatest legacy is the book she completed in 1996 on the history of the Superior congregation, "Called ... and Re-Called to Serve."

The book took two years to complete and gives a masterful description of the community's founding, its trials and triumphs and its conclusion.

The words she uses to describe the Sisters' move to St. Paul also offer an epitaph for the conclusion of her life's ministry:

"This author feels that there is also a time for re-planting; that our time for service was completed in one area; that we had accomplished the work that was there for us to do; and that we were called to serve in another area of need. It was the thing that we knew in our hearts we must do. We did it with as much dispatch and as gracefully as we could, for we felt it was the Holy Spirit moving in us and guiding us at every step of the way, and the Holy Spirit never makes mistakes."

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© Superior Catholic Herald, 2001