After Decades of Service, Five Nuns Die as Virus Sweeps Through Convent

CHICAGO — Our Lady of the Angels Convent was designed as a haven of peace and prayer in a suburb of Milwaukee, a place where aging, frail nuns could rest after spending their lives taking care of others.

Songbirds chirped in the sitting area. A courtyard invited morning prayers and strolls for the several dozen nuns who lived in the facility, a low-slung cream-colored building with a turret.

The quiet convent has become the site of a deadly cluster of the coronavirus. Four staff members have tested positive, a health official said. Since April 6, five nuns have died from the virus.

Covid-19, difficult to contain in any circumstance, has spread within Our Lady of the Angels with a particular invisibility. All five nuns who died were only discovered to have the virus after their deaths.

The women had moved into the convent after decades of service in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. They worked in parishes, schools and universities, teaching English and music, ministering to the aged and the poor and nurturing their own passions for literature and the fine arts. Our Lady of the Angels, which specializes in caring for people with dementia, was meant to be their final home.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/virus-wisconsin-nuns.html