Intact body of nun four years after her death sparks pilgrimage to US monastery

Hundreds of Americans are traveling to a small town in Missouri to see up close the body of the nun Wilhelmina Lancaster, exhumed four years after her death and without the natural signs of age. The perfect state of the body would be a sign of sanctity, making it a candidate for a future beatification.

Sister Wilhelmina is the founder of a monastery in Gower, an hour from Kansas City. She died in 2019 and the exhumation took place on May 18th, so that her body could be removed to the chapel of the convent.

According to the Catholic News Agency, more than a hundred bodies have already been found in the same state of preservation, but Wilhelmina is the first black woman to be unearthed in the United States without signs of decay years after her death.

The news spread especially through Catholic radios, taking hundreds of faithful to the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles monastery to observe Wilhelmina’s condition and say prayers.