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Sixty-two years later, elderly nun returns to homeland
by Nathan Byrne
Sister Laurencija Sarmaviciute has almost always been a refugee, even at times when she has actually found refuge away from home.
In what will likely be Sister Laurencija’s last change of address, she returns to a home she lost abruptly 62 years ago.
“They took about 35,000 Lithuanians to Siberia in one night,” she recalls of the Soviet invasion that sent her on the six-decade journey that would ultimately return her home.
Photo by Dan Madden
While she is on-the-run no more, Sister Laurencija shows no signs of slowing down.
“This year is different,” she says of the distant, former home that she visited for the first time in 54 years in 1998, and every year since then, yet never really reacquainted herself with. “Because I go to stay there.”
Conception Abbey’s Father Samuel Russell has visited Lithuania – the homeland of his maternal grandparents – every summer since 1992, but he met Sister Laurencija for the first time on American soil.
Father Samuel, who at the time served as a representative of the Holy See for the two Benedictine women’s communities in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania, had actually heard of Sister Laurencija and her small community of refugee Benedictine Sisters, but was called to meet them at Regina Pacis in Bedford, N.H. in April 1997. At the insistance of Bishop Leo O’Neil, Father Samuel and a delegation of Benedictines – Abbot Matthew Leavy of St. Anselm Abbey in Manchester, N.H., and Mother Regina Petkeviciute and Sister Gertrude Luksaite of the Kaunas mother community – visited Regina Pacis. Abbot Matthew and Bishop O’Neil were growing concerned with the welfare of the Benedictine Sisters as they aged (the then-81-year-old Sister Laurencija was the youngster of the community).
“Their hope was to reunite the Regina Pacis sisters with their Lithuanian mother community,” Father Samuel says. “With the end of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, this was finally possible.”
In less than two years, though, three of the five Lithuanian sisters died, Regina Pacis received no vocations and the convent ultimately closed. A fourth died in 2001, leaving Sister Laurencija as the sole remaining member of what was once Regina Pacis. At that point, Father Samuel says, Sister Laurencija felt closer to friends of Regina Pacis in Bedford than to anyone else.
“The second immigration Lithuanians always dreamed of returning to Lithuania,” Father Samuel says. “When they finally could, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, too much had changed there for them to feel at home.”
Sister Laurencija was reluctant to return for good. But it became apparent that Sister Laurencija, now 91, would soon need greater assistance. When given the choice of returning to her now-thriving community in Lithuania or staying in an assisted living facility, she chose her homeland.
“Sister Laurencija suffered greatly for many years,” Father Samuel says. “From fleeing Lithuania as World War II drew to a close, wandering through Germany for three years until she found a home, for 14 years in Belgium, then leaving to join other of her religious sisters in New Hampshire, where she worked very hard and suffered a lot, and then watching her sisters grow old and caring for them until they died.”
Throughout it all, he says, she has maintained a joyful spirit.
“Faith and prayer have pulled her through,” Father Samuel adds, acknowledging that Sister Laurencija has been an inspiration to him and others. “She has maintained a variety of interests that have kept her occupied and from focusing on her sufferings.”
On July 1, Father Samuel accompanied Sister Laurencija on the trip home.
“I’ll miss her cooking,” says Father Samuel. “I’ll also miss her faith and her ability to keep things in perspective.”
From Father Samuel’s perspective, Sister Laurencija has many years left among us, and he looks forward to seeing her every summer.
We welcome your comments:
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www.conceptionabbey.org
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