When Benedictine Sisters and the Abbess, Mother Cecilia, who are members of a monastery in Gower, Mo., recently moved the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster to a final resting place inside their monastery chapel, four years after her death in 2019 at the age of 95, they were shocked by what they found.
Sister Wilhelmina had not been embalmed. She was buried in a wooden coffin on the monastery grounds. The Sisters, expecting to find bones in the coffin, instead found what appeared to be a perfectly intact body. The coffin had a crack down the middle and moisture and dirt had come inside during those four years.
While the Sisters carefully removed the body from the grave, after estimating the skeleton would weigh about 20 pounds, they realized the body they were lifting was probably between 80-90 pounds.
It was Mother Cecilia’s responsibility as the head of the monastery, to examine what was in the coffin first. Mother Cecilia said, “I thought I saw a completely full, intact foot and I said, ‘I didn’t just see that.’ So I looked again more carefully.”
What she saw turned out to be exactly what she thought it was, a perfectly intact foot, and body.
The body was covered in a layer of mold that had grown due to the high levels of condensation within the cracked coffin. Despite the dampness, little of her body and nothing of her habit had disintegrated during the four years. There was no odor of decay.
The Sisters cleaned Sister Wilhelmina with hot water to remove the mask of thick mold on her face. Exposure to the air, along with the removal of the mold caused a loss of volume in the body, which resulted in darkening of the skin.
The sisters created a wax mask for Sister Wilhelmina’s face. Both of her eyes were still intact, along with her eyelashes and eyebrows, but one of the eyes had been pushed down due to the weight of the dirt in the coffin. The nuns also put a coat of wax on her hands.
Bodies that have not decomposed are viewed in the Catholic religion as ‘incorrupt,’ a sign of holiness, a life of grace lived so closely to Christ that sin with its corruption does not proceed in typical fashion, but is miraculously held at bay, according to the Catholic Church.
Decomposition is also a factor in the process of declaring sainthood. There is a required minimum of five years since death in the Catholic Church for a determination on sainthood.
When she was 70, after leaving the Oblate Sisters of Providence, where she had spent 50 years, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB, a native of St. Louis, founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles in 1995.
She said she founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary because she wanted to return to regular observance, which she had petitioned for during the general chapter of the Oblate Sisters of Providence. She also wanted the wearing of a uniform habit, the surrendering of all monies to a common bursar, the obeying of lawful authority in all departments, the guarding of enclosure and of times and places of silence, and living together an authentic fraternal life.
Sister Wilhelmina spent many of her years with the Oblate Sisters of Providence teaching in schools. She taught in the Archdioceses of Baltimore, Washington, Charleston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Miami.
When she was teaching in Baltimore, a troubled student threw a knife at her and her life was saved by the high necked collar on her habit.
The Benedictine Sisters were well known for their chart-topping Gregorian chant and classic Catholic hymn albums.
On Monday, May 29, the Sisters carried Sister Wilhelmina’s body on a platform in a procession around the property of the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus while reciting the rosary and singing hymns before her body was placed inside a permanent glass display case where it will be accessible for public viewing, near the altar of St. Joseph in the chapel in order to welcome her growing number of devotees. So many people came to Gower during the Memorial Day weekend that many local law enforcement officers, medical personnel and volunteers helped to manage the influx of those wanting to view the procession.
On Sunday, May 28, an average of 200 vehicles per hour were entering the abbey’s property, and Clinton County Sheriff Larry Fish said he expected 15,000 people to visit the site, possibly the largest influx of people ever entering the town. Knowing Sister Wilhelmina would be placed in a glass enclosure the next day, many people felt that May 28 would be the last time they would have the opportunity to touch the Sister’s body.
In a large grass field near the abbey, priests heard confessions for hours before the procession.
The Sisters were going to keep the body’s condition quiet, but the news of her perfectly preserved body spread on social media, and prompted worldwide media coverage, and the town of Gower, which has 1,500 residents has been flooded by thousands of people who have come from all over the U.S. to see and touch Sister Wilhelmina’s body. Despite the worldwide attention and crowds, the Sisters were able to continue their normal daily routines.
Mother Cecilia said they believed that this is the first African American woman to be found incorrupt.
More than 100 incorruptible saints have been canonized or beatified. They give witness to the truth of the resurrection of the body and the life that is to come, according to the Catholic Church.
After the exhumation, the Sisters said that not only Sister Wilhelmina’s body was in a remarkably preserved condition, but that her crown and bouquet of flowers were dried in place and her candle, ribbon, crucifix, and rosary were all intact.
The synthetic veil was perfectly intact, while the lining of the coffin, made of similar material, was completely deteriorated and gone.
Some morticians have been puzzled by the fact that Sister Wilhelmina’s preserved body was not embalmed and had no outer container around the wooden coffin, along with the fact that the weather in the area in not sub-zero consistently.
One suggested possibility for the preservation of Sister Wilhelmina’s body is grave wax, a rare process that occurs when a corpse, or parts of the corpse are encased in a shell of soap-like fatty tissue that stops the normal decomposition process. Grave wax can preserve a body for many years, and is caused by water and alkaline soil seeping into the coffin and turning fats in the body into soap through a kind of hydrolysis called saponification.
No official declaration has been issued by the Catholic Church that Sister Wilhelmina’s remains are incorrupt and there is not a formal cause underway for her canonization. According to Bishop Vann Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, a thorough investigation will need to be made in order to answer important questions about her body’s state when she was exhumed, and this can take many years to complete.
Sister Wilhelmina was once asked why she became religious. And she said, “Because I was in love with Our Lord.”