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Sister Maria Jesús makes her final vows.

Our prioress, Sister Anita Louise Lowe, along with Sister Kathleen Cash and Sister Roxanne Cassandra Higgins, all ventured to Peru last month when Sister Maria Jesús made her final profession.

Maria Jesús Lopez Berru was born on July 30, 2002 in Jaguay, Santo Domingo, Peru, the daughter of Manuel Jesús Lopez and Rosa Berru de Lopez. She began her postulancy with the Sisters of St. Benedict at Monasterio Paz de la Cruz in Morropón on March 21, 2019. She began her novitiate in March of 2020, and made her first profession on March 26, 2022.

Sister Maria Jesús is currently a full-time student in Elementary Education at the University of Piura. She also supports her Benedictine community at Paz de la Cruz Monastery and assists in vocational promotion.

Sister Maria Jesús enjoys many creative pursuits like artwork (especially drawing), playing the guitar, singing, and working in the garden. She loves the rhythm of monastic life, and enjoys praying with her sisters and helping in all the tasks around the house.

The Sisters of St. Benedict arrived in Morropón from Ferdinand after Vatican II in the 1960s to teach at and run St. Rita High School. St. Rita was originally built as a high school for girls from poor families in the parish. But because there were so many young women who lived in the more remote outlying areas around Morropón , St. Rita soon became a “pensionado,” or boarding school, that could accommodate fifty girls. One of the school’s very first principals was the late Sister Mary Baehl from Ferdinand.

By the 1980s, the Sisters of St. Benedict had begun accepting vocations from Peruvian sisters and established a dependent monastery in Morropón, one of six they founded in the western hemisphere. Before he became Pope Leo XIV, Father Robert Francis Prevost served in Peru from 1985 to 1986 and 1988 to 1998, during which time he became acquainted with our religious community at Monasterio Paz de la Cruz in Morropón.

Our Peruvian sisters with then Father Robert Francis Prevost, who would eventually become Pope Leo XIV.

We hope you will celebrate with us today as Sister Maria Jesús makes her final profession. We’ll share photos on social media and in the fall issue of Seek Pray Share. Please pray for Sister Maria Jesús and her entire religious community in Peru.