Brooklyn Nuns Celebrate Silver Jubilee, 1902

Two Nuns Celebrate Their Silver Jubilee. Took the Veil Together Twenty-Five Years Ago at St. Rosa’s Convent. Beautiful Service is Held. Sisters Justina and Valentina Congratulated by Relatives and Members of Order. (The Brooklyn Eagle, January 28, 1902)

 A very interesting ceremony was performed early this morning in the Roman Catholic convent of St. Rosa, attached to the Church of St. Michael, Jerome Street, near Liberty Avenue, in the Twenty-sixth Ward. Two nuns, who twenty-five years ago took the vows which bound them to withdraw from the world and its ambitions and pleasures, stood side by side and received the congratulations of friends and relatives and the members of the large convent family.

The celebration took the form of a religious exercise of unusual solemnity and importance, although, on the invitations sent out for the occasion, it was called simply a “silver jubilee.” The celebration was under the personal charge of Sister M. Florentina, and its success in every particular reflected great credit upon her talent and kindness of heart. The arrangements were perfect and nothing occurred to mar the felicity and beauty of the happy occasion. The good sisters who for twenty-five years have devoted their whole time and thought to the interest of others were apparently just as happy over the good wishes showered upon them as though they had been presented with a worldly fortune.

The two nuns, whose convent names are Justina and Valentina, and whose family names are, respectively, Voell and Schneider, entered the convent on the same day on January 28, 1877, and, side by side ever since, they have labored for the interests of their church. The nuns were teachers in the parochial school  attached to St. Michael’s Church, and the pastor, Rev. Honoratus Schmidt, counted them both as being the most painstaking and efficient of the corps of educators. The church and convent are among the most worthy in Brooklyn, having been established in 1860 and having a large property, which is valuable and entirely free of debt.

Sister Justina is connected with a well known East New York family whose members, it is said, take a great pride in her quarter of a century service to the cause of religion.