Sister Fran Wilhelm, OSU: "The night I entered, I knew I was where I belonged."

     Seven-year-old Maylín Roblero’s face lights up, she breaks into a big smile and quickly runs into the outstretched arms of the visitor walking into her home. Her mother, Antonia Gabriel, waits to report on the progress of her first grader.

     Jacquelin Galindo-Hidalgo smiles and clings tightly to the visitor to her home. It appears she simply doesn’t want to share the visitor with her younger sisters, Gisela and Elsa Ruby.
      Moments later, after escaping the clutches of young Jacquelin, the visitor sits between the watchful eyes and attentive ears of Yonivel and Alejandro Galindo at their kitchen table as she works on a doctor’s appointment schedule for six-month-old Elsa Ruby.
      The visitor who brightens so many Hispanic homes in Owensboro and the Daviess County area – and assists those in the homes – is Sister Fran Wilhelm, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph and director of Centro Latino, a center for local Hispanics she founded in 1993. Visiting homes to help schedule doctors’ appointments is just one of a litany of services offered by Centro Latino.
      Sister Fran’s journey to this Hispanic ministry was a long and interesting journey, one that included stops in Texas, South America, and California, and ministries in music and the Charismatic Renewal.
      She is a native of Waterflow, New Mexico, the middle of five children born to Frank and Lucille Wilhelm, four daughters and one son. Frank Wilhelm was a farmer who later became a butcher and a carpenter. “My father was very versatile,” says Sister Fran. “He was very good at everything he did. When he was farming, we moved around frequently looking for a farm that could produce better.”

     Those moves took her into a number of different schools in a number of different states as she was growing up.
      Sister Fran began her education in the prime (kindergarten) at Sacred Heart Academy in Waterflow, taught by the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. Unfortunately, it only lasted half of a year. Her father took over a farm in Nazareth, Texas, and moved his family there. She completed kindergarten, first and the first half of the second grade at Nazareth – taught by the Benedictine Sisters – but then moved again, this time to a “tiny little place called Jumbo, Texas, so small, it wasn’t even on the maps,” Sister Fran describes. At Jumbo she attended a two-room public school for one year, completing the second grade and the first half of the third. Another move followed
      The family moved farther out in the country, six miles from Hereford, Texas. Going to school meant a six-mile trip each day to St. Anthony School in Hereford, and classes taught by the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She made these long trips for two years – completing the second half

of the third grade, fourth grade and first half of the fifth. The family then moved closer to Hereford and finally planted its roots. Sister Fran completed grade school without moving again and went on to the public high school at Hereford four years without moving.
      During those years in public high school, Sister Fran and her Catholic classmates attended weekly religious ed classes from the Franciscan Sisters at St. Anthony Parish.
      Following graduation she knew what she wanted to do with the rest of her life – become a sister, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph.
      She hadn’t been taught by Ursulines since that half year in kindergarten way back in Waterflow, but she had a family tie to Maple Mount. Two aunts on her mother’s side were Maple Mount Ursulines – Sister Ancilla Marie and Sister Mary Edgar.

     Her first calling to religious life came as early as the third grade, but she shared it only with her closest friends. She kept the dream alive until she suddenly abandoned it her junior year in high school. But the calling returned.
      “In my senior year I felt this unrest and felt I had to go try it out,” Sister Fran recalls. “I talked to my parents, my pastor, and my Ursuline aunts, and chose the Ursulines of Maple Mount.”
      She continued, “After high school graduation I applied for entrance to the novitiate at Maple Mount, and Mother Laurine wrote offering me the option of going to college one semester at the junior college first – since I was so far from home – and then enter the novitiate in February after going home for a visit. That’s what I did.”
      And it proved to be the best decision in her life. She recalls with an obvious pleasant memory, “The night I entered, I knew I was where I belonged.”
      Appropriately, her first teaching assignment took her back home to Waterflow, New Mexico. Did she request the assignment? “No I didn’t request it, but when Mother Immaculata told me, I just jumped up and down!”
      Her first assignment wasn’t easy. She was given 27 fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Sacred Heart School. “I was having a hard time controlling them,” Sister Fran recalls. “And after two months they switched me to 47 pupils in the lower four grades. We all got along much better for the rest of the year.”

     The next year she taught second graders at Blanco, New Mexico, for one year, before moving on to Farmington, New Mexico, for an 11-year stay at St. Thomas Grade School, teaching fifth and sixth graders for one year, first and second graders for one year, and then music for nine years.
      While at Farmington, Sister Fran earned her degree in elementary education and a minor in music from the College of Saint Joseph of the Rio Grande and began studying Spanish.
      She left Farmington and taught music for two years at St. Joseph School in San Fidel, New Mexico, and for two years at St. Catherine School in New Haven, Kentucky, which would prove to be her last teaching assignment in the United States.
      In 1966, Sister Fran expanded her horizons to South America where she began teaching first graders in the Ursuline Sisters’ mission school in Caracas, Venezuela.
      After two years in Caracas, Sister Fran studied Spanish at a language school in Bolivia for two months and began teaching second and third graders at a Jesuit Mission school in Santiago, Chile, one of five Ursulines on the staff there. She remained in Santiago for six years.

     Next stop was Medellin, Colombia, to study in the Pastoral Institute of the Latin American Bishops for one year, learning to work in parishes rather than in schools.
      While in Medellin, Sister Fran met Marilyn Kramer of Charismatic Missions from La Puente, California.  Kramer invited her to California to be speaker at the state’s first Charismatic Convention. While there, Sister Fran was invited to go on a crusade to Taiwan and Korea – which she did – and then returned to California to work in charismatic missions for six years, the last three years as director of Charismatic Ministries for the Orange County diocese
      Sister Fran returned to Mount Saint Joseph in 1983 to manage the Prayer House. At the next election, she was elected to the leadership team, serving two terms while continuing to run the prayer house.
      While serving on the council and managing the prayer house, Sister Fran was asked to begin an associates program, which she did successfully.
      After her return to the Mount, Sister Fran saw a steady growth in the Hispanic population in Owensboro and the surrounding area. So, following her two terms on the council, she went to Bishop John McRaith and offered to be a church person to welcome the Hispanics. She told him she wanted to open a center where they could come and feel at home. “After telling him that, he told me to talk to Father (Pike) Powell in Stanley,” Sister Fran recalls. “At the time he had a school that had been empty for about ten years. We opened Centro Latino in that school in 1993.”

     The parish at Stanley (St. Peter of Alcantara) eventually wanted the school back for parish meetings, so in 2000 Centro Latino had to move from Stanley into Owensboro, to its present address at 524 Locust Street, two doors down from the Catholic Pastoral Center. “The diocese had purchased the house for the Marriage Tribunal,“ Sister Fran explains. “They were in need of new office space. We were going to only stay here for one year, but…we’re still here six years later.”
      She continues, “We lost some square footage in the move and emergency lodging capability, but we gained much easier access and more visibility to Hispanics and to the community.”
      What difference has Centro Latino made to the local Hispanic community?
      Sister Fran: “First of all, they have an anchor. They know they have a place. We’ve done a lot to get their religious needs attended to. Prepared parents and godparents for baptism. Prepared children for First Communion, adults for the sacraments. We’ve had prayer meetings that met weekly. We’ve also had a choir to sing at the liturgy because music is so important for the Hispanics.”
      The assistance isn’t limited to religious help. Sister Fran and her assistants are available to accompany the Hispanics to appointments and interpret for them, help them with their banking, help to get drivers licenses, automobile titles, and the list goes on.

     The Centro Latino staff has gone from one staff member to six. Funding is always a challenge. The center receives $1000 a month from the diocese, $500 a month from St. Vincent de Paul, and $200 a month from the St. Vincent de Paul group of Immaculate Parish. For some time there was money from two grants from the Catholic Health Partners – resulting from the hospital merger – but that money is now gone and plans are in the works for some fundraisers. Of course, donations from the public are always welcome.
      Sister Fran’s staff consists of Sister Rosemary Keough, a fellow Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph, Connie Caceres, Allen Shreve, Ruth Bittel, and secretary Mary Ann O’Bryan.
      As secretary, O’Bryan is invaluable to Sister Fran and the center. Says Sister Fran, “Mary Ann is an answer to prayer because she accomplishes so much work. She works a few hours, three days a week, five or six hours a day, but she accomplishes so much during that time. She is just a gift from God.”
      Sister Fran works a great deal outside Centro Latino with Patti Murphy, director of the Office for Hispanic Ministry for the Diocese of Owensboro, and Chris Gutierrez, director of Hispanic Ministry for Daviess County.
       “Chris is so enthusiastic,” says Sister Fran. “He’s a ball of fire, full of energy. It’s wonderful to walk along with him and help him accomplish what he’s trying to do.”
      She has similar praise for Murphy. “Patti is such a bundle of a gift from God,” she says. “She’s just so talented in so many ways…so very dedicated.”
      What kind of challenges does Sister Fran feel Centro Latino faces in the coming years?
      She says, “A continued growth and acceptance. I know that Hispanic people are accepted more than they were when they first came, but this whole illegal tag is hard for people to accept.
      “The bishop of Tucson recently said that if that law was just to begin with, sure we should fight it, demand that they obey that law. But he said they need us and we need them, so that makes that law unjust.”
      She continues, “I refuse to give up hope. Every night Sister Rosemary and I beg the Lord to pour his spirit every time the Congress is talking about immigration. We beg him to touch their hearts so that they’ll learn to accept immigrants and pass a just law. We just refuse to give up hope.”