Sister Judine Mayerle

Sister Judine Mayerle, age 84, of St. Scholastica Monastery, was called home on September 5, 2025, at Benedictine Living Community-Duluth in her 64th year of consecrated life. She entered the Benedictine Community on September 8, 1960, made her First Monastic Profession on July 11, 1962, and her Final Monastic Profession on July 11, 1965. She celebrated her Golden Jubilee in 2012.

Born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, on May 23, 1941, she was baptized Barbara Jean. She grew up in nearby Bovey on the Iron Range, attended school in Coleraine, and helped in the family’s hardware store. She recalled, “Sometimes I would stop at St. Mary’s Catholic Church and sit in the quiet semidarkness, aware even as a child of His loving Presence. I think my vocation was born in that little church and nurtured by my parents’ strong faith. I didn’t really pray. I just sat there, with Him.”

It was in Bovey that she first encountered the women in long black robes who came each summer to teach catechism. She thought they were cool, but she was planning to be a foreign correspondent, wear a trench coat, and carry a press card tucked into her hatband. Years later, on a cold January afternoon, she saw St. Scholastica Priory in Duluth framed in gently falling snow and knew where God was calling her. She enrolled at The College of St. Scholastica and studied for a double major in English and History with a minor in Journalism. Though enjoying college life, she was drawn to the solitude of the forest beyond the cemetery and to the Sisters’ voices chanting the Divine Office in Chapel. At the beginning of her sophomore year, she entered the Monastery and took the name Judine.

Sister Judine taught at Duluth Cathedral High School from 1964 to1968 and went on to graduate school, earning a master’s degree in Motion Picture History/Criticism from UCLA in Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in Television History/Criticism and Mass Communication Law from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She taught in related fields at The College of St. Scholastica, Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota– Minneapolis, and Marquette University in Milwaukee. She enriched her students’ education by inviting film and television professionals from Los Angeles to visit her classes and loved keeping in touch with many former students.

Sister Judine returned to Duluth in 1999 to serve on the Board of Trustees of The College of St. Scholastica and the Monastic Council. She worked with consultants in Strategic Planning, and in 2005 produced a 30-minute film, Sing a New Song, about the Community, for use in our vocation ministry. For our 125th anniversary in 2017, she wrote six articles for Pathways magazine on the history of our Community. While living on sabbatical near the Port of Duluth, she would lie awake and listen to the horn of a thousand-foot Laker approaching the aerial life bridge and remembered listening in the darkness as a child for the whistle of train engines pulling full ore cars south to Duluth.

Looking back on her life, she wrote, “I still sit in the silence with Him. Sometimes I speak. Mostly I listen. I never became a foreign correspondent, but the Benedictine value of stewardship challenged me to use my talents as I followed a different path. Whatever He asked of me, regardless how difficult, I would remember the words of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary: ‘Rejoice, fear not, nothing is impossible with God.’ Clearly the plans God has for us are so much better than what we might design for ourselves.”

Sister Judine was preceded in death by her parents, James and Frances (Kosher) Mayerle, and her brother Mark of Colorado Springs, CO. She is survived by her sister, Judith (Allan) Burroughs of New Milford, CT, brothers James (Kristin) of Coleraine and Thomas (Susan) of Edina, and the Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery.

Wake (9:45 am) and funeral Mass (11:00 am) will be on Tuesday, September 9 in Our Lady Queen of Peace Chapel at the Monastery, with Father Corbin Eddy presiding. Livestream begins at 9:45 a.m. at https://youtube.com/live/tLVcBMb8_Sw?feature=share. Interment will be in Gethsemane Cemetery. Arrangements by Dougherty Funeral Home.