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By Jon Spayde, from the fall 2024 issue.

In the 1925 La Concha yearbook, the graduating seniors of that year proudly claim a historic distinction: “Future classes of Derham Hall may give what boasts they have, but none will ever compare with ours. We are privileged in being the first to have our baccalaureate sermon in the beautiful new Chapel of Our Lady of Victory. Is that not worth giving honorable mention?”

A worthy honorable mention indeed for Our Lady of Victory Chapel, whose centennial — and highly anticipated reopening, after nearly two years closed for preservation work — ��ɫӰ�� celebrated last month. It is the school’s liturgical heart, a place of academic assembly, a sometime concert hall, and an abiding symbol of St. Kate’s Catholic foundation. Since its very beginnings the Chapel has been a haven of prayer and peace amid the dislocations of a troubled century; a beacon of the charge of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (CSJs) to love God and the dear neighbor.

In the years leading up to those enthusiastic seniors of 1925, St. Kate’s — then a college — was growing, and Masses had to be celebrated in three shifts. Hence, Our Lady of Victory was created not just to accommodate the student population, but to embody the still-small — but ambitious — College’s Catholic identity, its commitment to the liberal arts, its determination to grow, its belief that women deserved the best that American and world culture offered. 

These were among the values that Mother Antonia McHugh, St. Kate’s first dean and president, stubbornly insisted upon as she moved forward in plans for a building designed on a large scale and built with the finest materials and artisanship. She encountered some, such as Archbishop Austin Dowling, who were resistant to the Chapel’s size and cost — but Mother Antonia prevailed, prompting faculty member Mary Ellen Chase to suggest, with a smile, that the words “Our Lady of Victory” held “double significance.”

With persuasion from Mother Antonia, the builders were able to complete their work by October 7, 1924. On that sunny day — with only a window and two altar side statues still to come — the Chapel was dedicated with pomp and circumstance. The archbishop and some 70 priests and monsignors processed into the sacred space, and the “Town Gossip” columnist of the Saint Paul Dispatch waxed eloquent: “The episcopal purple made its own contribution to a pageant which also, after a time, included a brave array of academic black and white, as the student body filed in.”

Katies, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, and others were soon filing in for daily and Sunday Mass, strictly required for decades, and for opening and baccalaureate Masses, presidential inaugurations, and other College-wide solemnities and gatherings. It was part of a culture of compulsory, but enjoyable, togetherness. Looking back on college life in the 1950s, Ruth Haag Brombach ’60 recalled “the number of large, all-school festivals, convocations, celebrations, and occasions for prayer that we enjoyed with each other. … Together, students and faculty celebrated monthly holy hours and weekly convocations in academic gowns.”

There were sorrowful Masses — one in particular was dedicated to Agnes Hamm ’23, who died suddenly, in her early thirties, after marrying Colin J. L. Bittleston, a British naval officer and veteran of World War I; Mother Antonia arranged for a memorial tablet for Agnes near the Chapel’s Mary altar. When Mother Antonia herself passed, in 1944, Archbishop John Gregory Murray presided at a pontifical requiem Mass, and the combined choirs of the College and the Sisters sang her off to rest.

Happier rituals abounded too. The early-20th-century passion for allegorical-historical pageants came to the Chapel’s terrace in 1926 with an extravaganza celebrating the CSJs’ 75 years in Minnesota. St. Catherine Alumni News (SCAN) magazine reported that some 500 Katies and young women from five other institutions of higher learning thronged the space, and some took on roles personifying spirits such as “Tragedy, Comedy, Folk-Lore, Epic and Lyric Poetry, symbolizing the beauty of Literature and Religion.” The anniversary of a Sister’s vows could be feted with great joy and dignity, as was the 1939 golden jubilee of Sister Celestia, who operated the tea room in Whitby for years: nothing less than a High Mass sung by the combined choral clubs of St. Kate’s and St. Thomas.

In the 1970s, the Chapel also saw the first of what became a thriving tradition: alumni weddings. Although there had been a handful of weddings in Our Lady of Victory — beginning in 1926 with the union of Alice Kenney ’25 and Henry Orme — the archdiocese frowned upon nuptials outside the bride’s parish church. But after 1974 when chapels gained the right to celebrate the sacrament of matrimony, Shelley Ann Nelson married Randall F. Reardon in Our Lady of Victory, and the floodgates opened. In a 1984 issue of SCAN, wedding coordinator Sister Helen Margaret Peck ’24 wrote that she oversaw 479 weddings between July 3, 1975, and June 2, 1984. They gave her, she added, “a pleasant way to spend long weekends.”

Another consequential trend was the growing number of students from Protestant and non-Christian traditions. The focus of campus ministry, and the Chapel’s functions, began to evolve from a close focus on Catholic observance to a wider embrace of religious and spiritual diversity. In May of 1967, for example, Cantor Jacob Goldstein of the Temple of Aaron in St. Paul joined the St. Catherine/St. Thomas mixed chorus in a performance of the Jewish liturgical drama “Love Songs for the Sabbath,” in Our Lady of Victory, with interpretive movement choreographed by Twin Cities dance luminary Loyce Holton.

On October 6 and 7, 2024, after almost two years of closure for preservation work, St. Kate’s community members stepped through the Chapel’s beloved blue doors once more. A full century after Our Lady of Victory’s 1924 dedication, her sweeping arches, intricate carvings, and warm tiles were illuminated by hearts  and voices as students, alumni, CSJs, faculty, staff, and friends observed a special centennial Mass, choir concert, and abundant reminiscing.

With 100 years at the center of St. Kate’s — “the heart place for gathering,” as Sr. Sharon has called it — Our Lady of Victory’s celebratory reopening invokes words by Mother Antonia that have proven truer than ever.

According to a 1958 article of student newspaper The Catherine Wheel, Archbishop Dowling looked at the newly finished Chapel and remarked to Mother Antonia, “How will you ever fill it!”

“Your Excellency,” she replied, “we shall fill it to overflowing.”

See before and after photos of the Chapel preservation work at stkate.edu/OurPlace.

"Our Lady of Victory has been a venue to come together for so many different occasions: Masses, weddings, graduations, opening ceremonies at the beginning of every academic year. Special prayer services during Advent. And the concerts! I remember them so well; I sang in the chorale. It's just conducive to all kinds of prayer and gathering."

— Kay Eckstein McGuire ’83