Mary Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB (born Elisabeth Lancaster, later taking the religious name Mary Wilhelmina of the Most Holy Rosary; April 13, 1924 – May 29, 2019), was an African-American nun from rural Missouri who founded the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles.
Her remains were discovered as possibly incorrupt in May 2023. She was previously a member of the Oblate Sisters of Providence.
Life
Mary Wilhelmina was born Mary Elizabeth Lancaster on April 13, 1924 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was a descendent of enslaved African-Americans from Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. She joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an order of Black nuns in Baltimore, Maryland, when she was 17 years old and adopted the name Sister Wilhelmina. After joining the order, Sister Wilhelmina was a schoolteacher in the eastern United States for over 50 years.
In the 1995, at the age of 70, dissatisfied with what she saw as a loosening of standards in the Oblate Sisters of Providence, she founded the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 2005, the sisters moved to Gower, Missouri. Sister Wilhelmina died on May 29, 2019.
Exhumation
Four years after her death, the Benedictine Sisters exhumed Sister Wilhelmina's body on the feast of Louis de Montfort so her remains could be re-interred in their church. The sisters expected to find bones but after a few days of digging, they lifted up the simple wooden coffin and quickly noticed a massive crack down the middle of the lid. The prioress of the order, Mother Cecilia, discovered that their venerable foundress' remains, including her religious habit, were almost perfectly intact.
Jack Klein, owner of Hixson-Klein Funeral Home in Gower and issuer of her death certificate, confirms that Sister Wilhelmina was not embalmed and that the wood coffin was not placed into any outer burial container.
Pilgrimage location
Since Sister Wilhelmina's body was installed in a glass box in the abbey church in 2023, a steady stream of pilgrims, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have visited her remains by the thousands.