Patricia Welter '70 Receives 2009 Benedicta Riepp Award from Sisters of Saint Benedict

08/28/2009

Patricia Welter Receives 2009 Benedicta Riepp Award from Sisters of Saint Benedict

The 2009 Mother Benedicta Riepp Award was presented to Patricia Welter of Waite Park, Minn., by the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. Welter is a retired educator and administrator who is active in violence prevention programs and community building. The award is given annually to a woman who exemplifies Benedictine and Gospel values in her daily life.

Welter credits her time as a Benedictine high school student in her home town of Bismarck, N.D., but more so as a student at the College of Saint Benedict “for my strong understanding and belief in community, inclusiveness and hospitality.” As a teacher and principal for 35 years, as well as in her work as a board member for community organizations, she has been guided by these values.

As a teacher and administrator in the St. Cloud public school system during the 1980s and 1990s, Welter saw the city and its schools dramatically change from her first decade as a teacher. As a mentor and coach to teachers and staff, she says she saw her role as “expanding their vision of school to include needs of kids different from what they had known. At heart it’s about the dignity and respect of all people. I pushed some of the teachers to understand the circumstances of the families in our school and emphasized that we’re a community.” That same idea drove her as a principal to “think outside the box” and secure funding and programs to meet a variety of needs.

This mindset has taken her beyond the school setting to the larger community. Asked to be a board member at Anna Marie’s Alliance, an organization for battered women and their children that emphasizes the transformation of community to build healthy relationships, she quickly found their cause was close to her heart. She worked with Anna Marie’s to implement a program at North High School for kids at risk of abuse or of becoming bullies that has been replicated at other schools. She is now part of a larger effort in St. Cloud called “Connect” that aims to transform community by training in violence prevention through healthy relationships within and across various sectors, including business, health, government and faith organizations.

But what she is most excited about these days is her work on the board of the Somali Elders Council. This group of about 30 Somali immigrants “commited to being agents of help in their community” is working to become incorporated as a nonprofit. “It is incredible to see these people struggling and working so hard to make a life here, with a history of conflict and distrust of government agencies in their own country and no real model of civic life.” Again, Pat has identified tremendous need in the community and set about to do what she can to meet it. “You do what you can given where you are,” she says. Although her role is primarily helping them become a nonprofit, she has also helped secure one Somali woman a job and is in the process of becoming an English Language Literacy tutor.

Pat pointed to a course she took as part of a tri-college honor’s program at CSB as a large part of her formation. “The emphasis was on community,” she says, and the students lived in a pilot community. “The Sisters and monks [of Saint John’s Abbey] were the moderators, and it gave us a concrete experience of what intentional community was about.” The Sisters also created on campus an environment of vocation beyond the call to religious life, where young women asked themselves: “What am I called to do? How am I called to serve?”

The Mother Benedicta Riepp Award was presented during a prayer service in Sacred Heart Chapel at Saint Benedict Monastery’s annual Donor Appreciation Event on August 21, 2009. She was presented with an intaglio by artist James Hendershot representing a dream Mother Benedicta Riepp had of a flourishing community of Sisters.

Benedicta Riepp is the founder of Benedictine Women in America and the founder of Saint Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota in 1857. She came from Eichstätt, Bavaria, to St. Marys, Pennsylvania, at age 27 to answer a request for missionary Sisters to educate German settlers. In 1857, four Sisters and two candidates came to St. Cloud, Minn. They moved to St. Joseph in 1863. Gifted with amazing stamina and courage in the face of many difficulties, Mother Benedicta was a risk taker who would stop at nothing to respond to God’s call. The monastery she founded once numbered 1,278 Sisters, and established 11 independent houses throughout the world. For more information on Saint Benedict’s Monastery, its history and the Mother Benedicta Riepp Award, visit www.sbm.osb.org.

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