by Sister Jennifer Halling, OSB
Special to The Leaven
ATCHISON — Sister Suzanne Fitzmaurice, OSB, and Sister Gisélia Inacio Morais, OSB, celebrated their 25th anniversary of monastic profession on July 26, with a Mass at their monastery of Mount St. Scholastica here, followed by a luncheon.
Drawn to Benedictine life
Before coming to the Mount, Sister Suzanne was working as a parish youth minister in the Houston area.
“I always felt something was missing, but I wasn’t sure what that was,” she said.
Then, signs started pointing to religious life.
Sister Suzanne began exploring apostolic communities but an uncle, who was a Benedictine monk, suggested that she look at the Benedictine way of life.
In 1997, she came to the Mount for a visit.
“My world was very busy all the time,” said Sister Suzanne. “The stillness of Benedictine life attracted me, along with the chanting and prayer life.”
Sister Suzanne entered the Mount as a postulant in 1998, began her novitiate in 1999, made her first profession in 2001 and made her perpetual profession in 2004.
She has engaged in a wide variety of ministries, with roles as a teacher and campus minister at Notre Dame de Sion High School in Kansas City, Missouri, and Cristo Rey Kansas City High School; associate director of Keeler Women’s Center; and at the Mount as a vocation minister, director of monastic temporalities, technology advisor, spiritual director and retreat leader.
Her travels have included a trip to Tanzania in 2011 to teach Sisters there and a pilgrimage to visit Benedictine sites in Rome in spring 2026.
Answering an early call
Sister Gisélia is part of a Brazilian mission of the Mount in Mineiros, Brazil. The seeds of Sister Gisélia’s vocation were planted during her childhood, at a time when her father had to travel to work in another city and her family faced many hardships.
“There were some nuns who helped us a great deal, and to this day I am very grateful to them,” said Sister Gisélia. “My vocation was born from that living example set by those holy women. I was 7 years old at the time. They visited my mother often and helped us with food, clothing and prayer.”
Upon moving with her parents to Mineiros, she found a job at Divino Espirito Santo Parish, where Sister Eliene Batista Gouvea, OSB, was the coordinator and Father Joaquin Carlos Carvalho, OSB, was the pastor. Father Joaquin is a member of the men’s community that was founded from St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison.
Eventually, Sister Gisélia asked to do a trial period at the monastery.
“At first, everything was new,” she said, “but as I lived there alongside the Sisters, I began to experience simple yet powerful moments of prayer, communal life and work.
“This led me to make a firm decision: Here was where I wanted to be, alongside those Sisters whom I had always admired for their work, charism and fidelity to the church.”
Sister Gisélia made her first profession in 2001 and her perpetual profession in 2005.
Sister Gisélia studied at a music conservatory and now serves in the liturgical music ministry at St. Benedict Parish in Mineiros, where she teaches, forms new liturgical music groups and is the guitarist at some of the Sunday Masses. She also oversees a small farm owned by the Sisters.
“From the very first moments I was introduced to the Rule of St. Benedict, I identified deeply with it,” said Sister Gisélia, “and my heart was already burning with the desire to seek to live according to St. Benedict’s teachings.
“I have never had any doubts about the life I chose to live.”
