HELEN MARIE (EDITH) WOLKERSTORFER, BVM 2026 JUBILARIANS ~ SISTERS OF CHARITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

BVM Helen Wolkerstorfer’s life has unfolded as steadily and quietly as a cloud in the sky—simple, faithful, and transformative. The Minnesota native was raised in St. Paul in a family of seven children. Her mother, Theresa, was a convert to Catholicism, and her father, Edward, was a devout Catholic. Her parents instilled practices in their children that shaped their daily lives: rosaries prayed on living room floors, winter Mass attended despite the bitter cold, and Lent observed with reverence.

These early experiences laid a foundation, but Helen traces her first awareness of a religious calling to a quiet moment in grade school, kneeling in a chapel before a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows. The statue depicted Mary with a sword piercing her heart, based on the prophecy of Simeon in the book of Luke. “That sword touched me,” she recalls. “I just wanted to make people happy.” Her path toward the BVMs came into focus during high school at Our Lady of Peace in St. Paul, where she encountered the sisters for the first time. What stayed with her was not doctrine or discipline, but joy. “They were just a nice bunch of women,” she says. By her senior year, Helen and nine classmates, who called themselves the “Taffy Hill Mob,” entered the congregation together.

Teaching came later, almost by surprise. “When I entered the convent, all I knew was that I had to go,” Helen says. “I didn’t know beans about what they did.” She quickly discovered a love for education. After studying biology at Mundelein College in Chicago and following that up with a master’s degree from St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., she found her vocation in the classroom. She taught junior high and high school science, later adding theology to her repertoire.

After a serious illness, Helen found therapy to be a helpful tool in her recovery. The experience so profoundly affected her that she returned to school to study psychology.

She went on to earn a master’s degree in clinical psychology at Antioch University in Santa Barbara, Calif., and eventually transitioned into school-based counseling.

At Bishop Garcia Diego High School in Santa Barbara, Helen moved seamlessly between teaching and therapy, walking with students through grief, family struggles, and the ordinary turbulence of adolescence.

“You just kind of moved with the kids as they grew up,” she says. “You knew the families. You knew the community.”

Santa Barbara became home for 42 years—a place Helen describes as culturally rich, welcoming, and beautiful, nestled between ocean and mountains. She loved hiking and cross-country skiing, and she was passionate about ocean kayaking. “I kayaked with impunity until the sharks started showing up,” she says. “Then that was enough for me.” But Helen pulled her kayak out of storage when she moved to Mount Carmel Bluffs in Dubuque, Iowa. She could often be seen paddling along the shore of the Mississippi River in her watercraft.

Asked what it means to be a BVM, Helen returns to a simple phrase: “Living freely in God’s steadfast love.” She illustrates it with a small memory—greeting a lonely student each morning without realizing how much it mattered until years later when the student recounted how meaningful it was.  “It doesn’t take much,” Helen says. “Who’s to know how that will affect someone?”  Helen devoted her life to teaching and counseling, but most of all, she has an unwavering devotion to young people. These days, Helen spends her time reading, praying for peace, and participating as she is able in community life. Her German surname—often interpreted as “one who comes from the clouds”—is an appropriate description of how Helen has left quiet yet enduring traces in the lives she has touched.

https://www.bvmsisters.org/