For nuns, April 15 is just like any other day

[Times photo: Dan McDuffie] Sister Helen Lange has lived since 1930 at Florida Holy Name Monastery in Saint Leo. In earlier days, she worked as a teacher and a school principal. She has now retired here, and has made this room her home for the past 10 years.

By SHARON TUBBS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 15, 2002

''God has delivered me from paperwork!'' says one of the sisters, who take a vow of poverty as part of their religious commitment.

But Sister Mary Clare Neuhofer pays the annual chaos no mind.

A Benedictine nun, she has never filed an independent tax return, never concerned herself with a year's wages and what some in the religious community see as its trappings. More than 40 years ago, she vowed to live a life devoted solely to God, a life of poverty void of material things.

More than 70,000 Roman Catholic sisters live in the United States. Many work for stipends at religious institutions and do not pay income taxes. They get a monthly allowance for clothes, incidentals and entertainment that is often less than the price of an outfit at Stein Mart.

"You're not encumbered by having all these possessions," Sister Neuhofer says.

Simplicity. It has become a mantra in recent years as feel-good-about-yourself advocates seek to turn narcissistic Americans from their material ways. Oprah Winfrey, among the richest women in the nation, hosts shows about going back to basics. Book writers are peddling instructional guides that tell people how to get rid of stuff and how to smell the flowers. Redbook featured "15 Ways to Simplify Your Life." One woman moved from a bustling New York back to her hometown, making a fifth of her Big Apple income. It was a good thing, the article says.

"Let go," it says. "Grow things."

But nuns have learned that managing with less has its own complexities.

Holy Name Monastery in Saint Leo is a quiet place, a weathered, turquoise, dorm-style building, tucked in hilly Pasco County where the aroma of horses and cows equals fresh air. About 30 Benedictine sisters call it home. They bake cakes and brew coffee for the annual rattlesnake festival and pretty up the place when priests and business groups come here for retreats.

Nuns visit the sick, teach at Catholic schools, administer and serve in hospitals and retreat houses, act as administrators for their orders and as regional liaisons to bishops and other Catholic officials, among other duties.

Many are college-educated and have degrees in subjects ranging from music to education. Locally, the Diocese of St. Petersburg pays nuns who work for the organization a standard $1,550 monthly stipend. But they never see a dime. The money goes directly to their religious communities.

Sisters who work outside of the diocese, at a spouse abuse shelter, for instance, take their paychecks straight to their religious communities. Often someone in the business office files income tax returns for those sisters.

Regardless of their work situation, sisters at Holy Name get a monthly allowance of up to $60. From that, they must buy toiletries, clothes, accessories and nonessentials, including unprescribed medications or health aids, such as vitamins or soy milk. The religious community pays for all medical bills and prescription medications through the pool of nuns' salaries, fundraisers and private donations.

[Times photo: Dan McDuffie] The modest lifestyle of a nun is not without purpose. “You know, if you have a lot of possessions, you really spend a lot of time taking care of all your possessions,” says Sister Mary Clare Neuhofer, a Benedictine nun at Florida Holy Name Monastery in Saint Leo.

Each woman has her own simple dorm room with a single twin bed, a desk, a lamp and table and sink. They share bathrooms and showers. They clip coupons for soap, toothpaste and other things. It's what's on sale or what's on the coupon that is important, not the brand name.

In the community room they can watch TV. But, today, a sister is relaxed in a cushioned recliner. It, like the other chairs, was donated years ago. Two card tables, likely decades old, sit off to the side. The sister is reading a book from the corner room that the nuns call their library. Most of the books here are religious: From Resurrection to Pentecost; Cross of Death, Tree of Life.

Sister Neuhofer, herself, likes mysteries. Her allowance doesn't leave money to buy her own, so a library card is valuable. She scans the newspaper for bestseller lists, then calls her local librarian to reserve the book before it gets in.

A jovial woman in a white cotton shirt, mint pants and comfortable shoes, Sister Neuhofer is the prioress, or spiritual leader and administrator, for the monastery. She grew up in a small town and has been a nun for 40 years, or something like that, she says. (She doesn't really keep count of such things.)

For fun, she and three or four others gather on Sundays to do the newspaper crossword puzzle. One of them calls out the clues, while the others guess the answers. Sometimes, the sisters splurge and go to Pizza Hut for dinner.

A woman comes to cut their hair periodically and charges only $5. Sister Neuhofer occasionally gets a little something extra. Her reddish mane is unmanageably straight, she says, so she tucks away a few dollars for a $30 perm a few times a year to keep it out of her eyes.

In her lifestyle, she sees a beauty of its own. "It leaves you free to really enjoy nature," she says. "You know, if you have a lot of possessions, you really spend a lot of time taking care of all your possessions."

Sister Germaine Bevans, the diocesan vicar for religious and also a Benedictine sister with Holy Name, drives a 1997 Saturn her community owns. She is careful never to say "my car," but rather, "the car I use."

She loves classical music and the theater, but can't recall the last time she was able to afford a ticket to a play. She is thrilled today, though. "Someone gifted me with some tickets for the symphony," she says pulling out the stubs for an April performance at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg.

Her clothes often come from consignment shops or are gifts from family members. Sometimes she'll go to a discount store and pick up a nice scarf -- she loves scarves -- then head for the checkout line.

"And something says, 'Sister Germaine, you don't need that.' And I put it back."

Deprived? No, Sister Bevans says. "It's the life that I have chosen," she says. "I'm grateful for everything."

Not all sisters live in monasteries. Sister Lucia Brady shares a three-bedroom, two-bath house in Largo with two other nuns. They are members of Sisters of St. Clare, a branch of a Franciscan religious order.

The house is owned by St. Jerome's Catholic Church, where Sister Brady and another roommate work full-time for their $1,550 stipends. The third sister takes college courses and works part-time, making about half what the others do. They call the house a convent and comprise their own "community."

Half of their total household income goes to a central fund that the Sisters of St. Clare sets aside, in part for missions in El Salvador, Guatemala and for nuns' retirement.

They get an $80 monthly allowance. The rest goes to household expenses: food, maintenance, bills and upkeep.

A community checking account requires two signatures. The sisters send regular financial reports to regional and international offices, Sister Brady says.

The three gather for community meetings to decide what to buy for the house. Sometimes, they have different perspectives, Sister Brady says. But sooner or later, they work it out "for the greater good."

Sister Brady has lived in the house about 4-1/2 years. The most expensive thing the sisters have bought was a hand-crafted wooden tabernacle for a sun room that they turned into chapel. Before, the sisters used a simple tabernacle the church gave them for worship. Over the course of a year, they contemplated and discussed buying their own. In the end, they hired a man from Clearwater who built a new tabernacle, chiseling the images of Saint Clare, Saint Francis and a lamb, signifying the "Lamb of God."

It cost somewhere between $1,500 and $1,800. "We were excited," Sister Brady says, after genuflecting and standing again to observe the altar.

The sisters are considering whether to buy more chairs for their chapel. The seats there now are high-backed and cushioned. Sister Brady envisions something wooden and stern with arms and a low back. But the group has made no decision yet.

She moved to the United States in 1988 from her native Ireland to work with Irish immigrants in the Bronx. It was supposed to be a two-year assignment, but she moved to Holiday in 1990 and has lived and worked for the local diocese ever since.

While in Europe, she visited England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, the Holy Land, sometimes with her family.

"One of my main passions would be travel," she says. "If I had time and money, I think India is somewhere I'd like to go."

She prays several times a day, with the other sisters and alone, and is intrigued by how some Eastern religions see God in all things. "I think I feel I'm influenced . . . by their spirituality," she says.

One thing she is grateful for: She never has filed a tax form, long or short. "God has delivered me from paperwork!" she laughs.

About 27 acres of orange trees stand near State Road 52, some trees buffet the lake beyond out back at Holy Name. The Benedictine Sisters of Florida own them.

In the kitchen, a tiny woman in a starched white habit is hunched over a container filled with halved oranges.

"This is Sister Imelda," Sister Neuhofer says. Her specialties are fresh juice and tasty cookies, "Right, Sister Imelda?"

"What's that?"

"You make the most incredible cookies . . ."

Sister Imelda smiles and goes back to the task at hand, putting the oranges one by one into an electric juicer.

The freezes in the 1980s ruined most of the orange crop. The trees had to be replanted and some still haven't matured. Last year, the sisters lost money on the groves because the cost of maintaining the groves exceeded proceeds from the crop, Sister Neuhofer says.

If the religious community ever makes a sizable profit selling their oranges to commercial buyers, it might have to pay taxes on it. Sister Neuhofer doesn't suspect that'll happen any time soon.

At one point, the sisters tried to subsidize a day care center on the grounds with the orange sales. Of course, that didn't work well since the oranges could barely pay for themselves. The day care will close next month.

About 10 of the sisters at Holy Name are older than 80 and two are in their 70s, says Sister Neuhofer, shy about giving her age. Nationally, more than 50 percent of nuns are older than 70.

Sister Helen Lange has lived at Holy Name since 1930.

"I'm living young in an old body of 89 years," she says.

In the old days, Lange worked as a teacher and a school principal. She retired, but went back to school to study gerontology and started working at nursing homes. Now she's retired for good. Legally blind, she listens to books on tape, goes for walks and occasionally uses her allowance for a "good steak," she says.

"I'm still having a lot of fun," she says.

Holy Name has paid in recent years to install automatic doors in the hallways and chapel. The chapel needs more renovations to become handicapped-accessible. Three of the women use wheelchairs.

Sister Neuhofer hopes the oranges will do better this year. "If we have a good year," she says, "We have some extra money to do some extra stuff with."

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