Mount St. Scholastica Benedictine Sisters - Atchison, Kansas The Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas have a lovely campus which is open during daylight hours, but to view the two magnificent chapels and small museum, an advance appointment is necessary. The museum is called the Benedictine Sisters Heritage Room and is located in St. Cecilia. St. Cecila is a large, handsome mansion which was originally called the Price Villa and was renamed after it was purchased in 1877. After my visit to Mount St. Scholastica, I learned that there is also a Monastery Goods Gift Shop offering liturgical gifts, cards, preserves and jellies from the the monastery fruit trees, honey from Mount St. Scholastica bees, jewelry and hand knitted & crochet items.
The large St. Scholastica Chapel was built in 1933. It has magnificent marble columns and the sister who was showing me around pointed out a large nautilus fossil in one of the columns. There is a lovely rose window at the rear of the chapel and seven of the beautiful stained glass windows honor martyred women saints.
The smaller Choir Chapel in the Monastery was built in 1900 and the high backed wooden seats lining the room remind me of the portion of European cathedrals which is called the choir or the chancel. The public is invited to attend mass here on Sunday's at 10:15 AM. Guests may also join other prayer times during the week, though those services require an appointment to be let into the locked building. Those times and more info are available online. You may also leave prayer requests. The tall stained glass windows along the sides were installed in the late 1940s and are an early blending of traditional with mid-century modern. They were begun by Chicago school artist Alfonso Iannelli, although Emil Frei glass studio also brought Francis Deck from St. Louis into the design and the two styles combined into something unique for that time, which has a contemporary feel to me. The round windows above them were originally a generic floral, probably just painted, glass and were taken out and bricked up during a 1940's renovation of the chapel. The ones there now were designed locally in the 1980s during the next chapel renovation. They add light and color, but don't coordinate with anything else. Thank you to Sister Judith Sutera, OSB for her assistance in providing the history of the stained glass windows. I was pleased to discover that the tower on the Monastery Chapel has gargoyle down spouts, This is only the third church where I have found them in Kansas. The others are in Leavenworth and Fort Scott.
copyright 2024 by Keith Stokes |
