Sister Catherine Kaufman, 92, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph, died Monday, July 29, 2024, in Owensboro, in her 67th year of religious life.
A native Dahlgren, Ill., Sister Catherine was an Ursuline Sister of Belleville, Ill., before the merger with Mount Saint Joseph in October 2005. A gifted cook, she served for 45 years as director of food service at the Ursuline Motherhouse in Belleville, where she was also noted for beautiful needlework. At Maple Mount, she was known for her decorating, quilting and care of plants.
Survivors include the members of her religious community; siblings Paul Kreher of New Baden, Ill., Betty Rapp, Dorothy Heil, and Rosanna Nise, all of Dahlgren, and Lucille Auten, of McLeansboro, Ill.; nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, Charles and Gertrude Rose Kaufman, and her stepfather Joseph Kreher; and by siblings Henry Kaufman, Charles Kaufman and Father Eugene Kreher.
The funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Aug. 2, at Mount Saint Joseph, where visitation will begin at 4 p.m., Thursday, with a wake service following at 6:30 p.m.
Glenn Funeral Home and Crematory, Owensboro, is handling arrangements.
Donations in memory of Sister Catherine can be made to the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, 8001 Cummings Road, Maple Mount, KY 42356.
Wake Reflection
By Sister Sharon Sullivan, Congregational Leader
10 June 2024
Just about two weeks ago in Retreat, Sister Catherine Kaufman reflected with these words from the 27th Psalm:
“Wait for the Lord, take courage;
be stouthearted, wait for the Lord.”
Throughout her life, Sister Catherine would say, “I always knew I had a call; I was just not sure where or when.” And “God spent a lot of time getting me where He wanted me to be.” So, at 12:51 a.m., Monday, July 29th (just one month shy of her 93rd birthday), Sister Catherine must have been exactly where God wanted her to be and she stepped at last right in to God’s loving embrace.
On the hottest day of the year in tiny Dahlgren Township in southern Illinois on Saturday, August 29, 1931, Helen Marie Kaufman joined her brother Henry, becoming the second child of Charles Albert Kaufman and Gertrude Rose Birkner Kaufman. One week later, on Sunday, September 6th, she was baptized at Saint John the Baptist Church in Piopolis, Illinois.
Just eighteen months later, the third child – Charles – was born, and little Helen Marie became a big sister. Only six months after that, she lost her dad to an illness and the family went to live with the Birkners, her maternal grandparents. But Helen Marie’s world would soon change again.
When Helen Marie was four years old, her mother married Joseph Kreher, a widower with eight children. Sister Catherine would remember, “by this marriage . . . I acquired three stepbrothers and five stepsisters. Two half-brothers – Gene and Paul – and four half sisters – Betty, Lucille, Dorothy, and Rosanna – were born of this union.” And to all those dear family members, we, the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, offer our prayers, our love, and our thanks for sharing Helen Marie, or Sister Catherine, with us.
Sister Catherine would continue reflecting on that time, “I remember being scared of what was ahead. Within a year there was a new baby girl added to the family and I started first grade because I had to.” The family lived “in the country, three miles from church and school, and we got there by walking or a horse-drawn wagon.”
Elementary school was held at Saint John the Baptist School and was taught by Precious Blood Sisters from Runa, but it was actually the public school of Piopolis, Illinois. Helen Marie enjoyed her first three years of school, but remembered being teased in the upper grades, being told – when she was eight years old or so – that she “was ugly when she smiled; so, for the next thirty-five years she tried to never smile!”
On Christmas Day in 1941, Helen Marie received her first Holy Communion when she was ten years old; she later said, “our pastor believed one had to be older to know they were receiving Jesus – I wonder if I knew.” At home, Helen Marie was busy helping with the cooking, cleaning, gardening, and caring for the younger children. She recalled, “when I graduated from 8th grade, Mom told me it was not important for a girl to go on to high school. My older brother hadn’t gone either.” So, Helen Marie remained at home on the farm.
In late 1946, tragedy struck Helen Marie’s family again when her younger brother Charles, just 13 or 14 years old, died in a hunting accident the day after Christmas. She wrote, “Charles was the one I had been most close to and so I often missed him. . . . [Two years later,] at age 17, I was sent to St. Louis to earn my way by doing housework.” After three months in St. Louis, she got so homesick for her family and the farm that she went home for the summer, but returned to St. Louis for about five more years, continuing to cook, care for children, and do housework for families.
But God was still pursuing Helen Marie. She would say, “As I look back, God spent a lot of time getting me where He wanted me to be. I had a boyfriend when I was eighteen, and I was as shocked as he was, when one day out of my mouth came the words, ‘I might be in the convent some day.’ It may have shocked me, but it was the end of him.”
Then in 1953, after a visit to Chicago to see her brother who was stationed there in the army, on a Greyhound bus ride home, she heard a “call loud and clear to spend my life doing something more worthwhile than I had been doing so far. This resulted in my entering the convent of the Franciscan Hospital Sisters of Saint Francis at Springfield, Illinois, in September 1953. I left there in January of 1955.”
She would say, “leaving was hard but as time went on, I have been grateful that I am where I am now.” For Helen Marie then moved to Belleville, where her brother Gene was in seminary, and began working in the laundry at St. Elizabeth Hospital, also run by the Springfield Franciscans.
Although Helen Marie was not actively researching the Ursuline Sisters of Belleville, she later wrote, “during the late summer of 1956, two priests, friends of the Ursuline Sisters (of Belleville), suggested to me to get in touch with these Sisters. This I did. And after just two weeks, I entered” on Saturday, August 18, 1956.
About becoming an Ursuline, Sister Catherine would write, “this is where God wanted me, and what God wanted me to do. The day I entered the Ursulines, I was told I needed to get a degree in sanctity. I feel I’m still working on it.”
Helen Marie recalled, “I entered on a Saturday. On Monday morning, I was sent to sub in the kitchen for the Sister who had to go and paint somewhere.” But Helen Marie, then twenty-five years old, was also now eager to earn that high school diploma she had missed earlier. She said, “After entering at Belleville, I did take some high school courses with [the aspirants over the next five years.] But my work interfered with my studying and my studying interfered with the work I was supposed to do, so I discontinued it. I still had four or five more credits to get.”
It is worth noting that, as in many aspects of her life, Sister Catherine would find a way to meet this dream; and in 1987 – thirty years later – she would complete her GED exam, passing with high marks, and received her diploma in 1988.
On a warm Thursday, August 22, 1957, Helen Marie was invested – becoming Sister Catherine Kaufman – and entered the novitiate at Belleville, the American center for the Calvarienburg-Ahrweiler Congregation of Ursulines. German was the language of many of her documents and of some of the sisters. Sister Catherine continued her kitchen duties and shared, “. . . one day this German sister was doing the cooking; I got to the kitchen that morning, and she said, ‘do this, do that.’ But I had no idea what she said. Anyway, I guess we ate that day.” Twenty-six years later, in 1983, the Belleville Ursulines would be granted autonomy.
As an Ursuline Sister of Belleville, Sister Catherine continued her life of service. Her hands were always busy with crocheting, cleaning, raking leaves, mowing grass, creating bulletin boards. But she was soon called to the ministry for which she became so well known – cooking for and nourishing the fifty or so Sisters and aspirants at Belleville. Her specialties included baking bread – she would say, “getting my hands into dough helped me meet my Creator who was fashioning me.” She baked and decorated Easter lamb cakes, was an expert at canning and preserving, and could secure fresh fruits and vegetables from area orchards and gardens.
But, for more than forty years, Sister Catherine was not content to “just” serve at Belleville in those ways. We already know that she earned her GED in 1987, but over the years these, too, happened:
- She got her driver’s license in 1969, no small accomplishment.
- In 1981, at age 50, she took up swimming lessons, claiming it took her 2½ years to swim the length of the pool.
- She shared prayer with a Charismatic prayer group in the 1970’s.
- She completed a diocesan Ministry Formation Program in 1990 and began visiting and taking communion to Memorial Hospital.
- She completed the Reiki Natural Healing First Degree in 1996.
- In 1998, Sister Catherine joined a pilgrimage to Saint Angela’s Italy with the Cleveland Ursulines.
Perhaps most memorable was her helping introduce and continue to support Father Roger Karban’s scripture class at the Belleville Motherhouse. Sister Catherine recalled how this began, perhaps sometime in the late 1970’s or 1980’s. She wrote, “I was forced to go to a Sunday evening liturgy [not her first choice!] . . . and I didn’t want to go, but if I was going to get to Mass, I had to go there. They were having Scripture class right after the Liturgy, so I stayed and in the middle of the class, I piped up, ‘Can anybody join this class?’ And so I was with that scripture class for over thirty years!”
But the Belleville Ursulines were getting smaller and the community had begun exploring the possibility of merging with the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. Perhaps what happened next can best be reflected from Sister Catherine’s various narratives:
In 2001, “I came to Mount Saint Joseph for a week of rest, relaxation and retreat. I got out of the car at the Retreat Center, and something went through me that said, ‘This is home.’ . . . I realized I needed to [move. So, four years later, I] moved here in January 2005, ten months before the merger officially took place.”
Once again, it seems that God told her where she was supposed to be. In 2017 Sister Catherine would write of Mount Saint Joseph, “Living here has enriched my life in different ways. When I first came here. . . it was hard leaving friends behind in Belleville; [but] God has blessed me with a community that loves and cares for me.”
Sister Catherine soon found her niche at Mount Saint Joseph; in her first Archive Annals for the 2006-2007 year, she answered the question, “Type of Ministry,” with one word: “Helpful.” Sister Catherine continued to be helpful and serving those with whom she lived; her ministries included wrapping napkins, filling salt and pepper shakers, caring for plants (with her extraordinary green thumb), delivering mail, decorating the dining room, subbing at switchboard, quilting, and washing tablecloths.
She gained three classmates, Sisters Rosemary Keough, Lois Lindle, and Grace Simpson; and to Sisters Lois and Grace we offer our love and sympathies at the loss of your newest classmate.
Sister Catherine reached beyond her helpful service, participating as she was able in Sister Rose Marita’s “Canticle of the Cosmos” classes, assisting in committees, attending workshops and programs. Sister Catherine’s health began to deteriorate – and we thank our healthcare staff for all the love and support you gave to Sister Catherine.
Although her health continued to deteriorate, she attended this Summer’s Community Days just a couple of weeks ago. In response to the last task of Community Days, to answer the question, “What can the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph expect of me at this time?”, Sister Catherine wrote: “My hope is to live until I die.” Clearly, she was intending to do just that; as she confided to Sister Monica during those Community Days that, even though she hadn’t been given official permission to do so, she planned to keep on filling the salt and pepper shakers in the dining room. So there, too!
Sister Catherine recently wrote, “In looking at all that has happened, I give God thanks and glory for getting me to where it seems God wanted me and wants me.” We know now that that is in God’s loving embrace.
Thank you, Sister Catherine, for sharing your life and loving service with us.
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