“On December 20, 1937, the light of day came to me for the first time at St. Ann’s Orphanage in St. Louis, Missouri. I was adopted when I was almost two years of age by Mr. and Mrs. Leo Steinbrenner.”—-so begins Sr. Jacqueline Marie’s account of her life. Her adoptive father, Leo, was from Germany and her adoptive mother, Minnie, from Switzerland. Sr. Jacqueline always spoke about the great love they showed her and an older brother, Leo, whom they had adopted the year before. Sr. Jacqueline still possesses what few of us have: a formal Certificate of Award from St. Cecilia School for the Kindergarten Course, dated the ninth day of June, 1943. Elementary school in a Franciscan parish, St. Anthony’s, gave her a good foundation in faith and the impetus for her first vocation as a Franciscan. She recalled “the good example that my parents gave to me in their involvement in our parish when I was growing up. They had a sense of pride and obligation to be involved. For me this was preparing me to take responsibility in the larger setting of Church community. It was done with joy, and unassumingly.”

After high school Jacqueline Marie, in 1954, entered the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Ferguson, Missouri. She professed first vows August 12, 1957 as Sr. Mary Leonise but by that time she was already teaching and on her way to getting a B.A. degree from Webster College in St. Louis. Her Franciscan sisters since 1901 had taught in about 16 States, and Sr. Mary Leonise managed, in 15 years, to teach in six: Illinois, California, Ohio, Louisiana, New Mexico and Missouri. Some of her fondest memories were teaching African American children, grades 6-10, in Monroe, Louisiana in the 1960s. Along the way, she changed her religious name back to her baptismal name, Jacqueline Marie.

By the early 1970s Sr. Jacqueline was hearing an inner call to go deeper into the contemplative life all Christians are called to - but one lived within a community that has a lifestyle shaped by and for that contemplative life. She made a retreat at our St.

Louis Monastery and began a several year discernment process and novitiate leading to her transfer of vows to the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration on September 8, 1974. Earlier that year she had written a paper entitled Joy- Heritage of the Monk in which she articulated the connections between the Franciscan aspect of joy and the monastic tradition: “Joy must be a part of the life of the one seeking God, taking in one’s past, present and future all hooked into one eternal now. The graces of life already gone cause the monk much happiness, even if pain was a part of it along the line. Jesus saves and continues His salvation each day.”

As a BSPA sister, Sr. Jacqueline’s talent and training for art was put to good use in the Printery design and layout department and for our magazine, Spirit and Life. She won a Catholic Press Award in 1976.

While in our Mundelein and Kansas City monasteries, the Altar Bread departments there benefited from her direction, wit and energy. She also lived through the difficult months of closing those two monasteries.

The early 1980s found her as pastoral minister at St. Benedict Health Care Center, our then congregational infirmary in St. Louis. She took a course in gerontology at St. Mary of the Woods, Indiana, and a course in sculpture. 1988 was a difficult year: her mother died in January and her only brother, Leo, in March. During the 1990s and early 2000s she was stationed at various times in both our Tucson and Clyde monasteries. Sr. Jacqueline learned the art of icon writing. During and after a time with the sisters at our San Benito monastery, Dayton, Wyoming she wrote an icon for their chapel of Saint Kateri Tekawitha. In Tucson she became friends with a woman in the Islamic mystical Sufi tradition and broadened her appreciation of how God is sought and perceived in non-Christian faith traditions.

Sr. Jacqueline was a relational person; friendships mattered, and her smile could light up a room. An especially enjoyable time for her was as Oblate director for 4 years in Clyde. In April 2007 she celebrated her Golden Jubilee of profession.

Throughout much of her adult life, Sr. Jacqueline Marie struggled with the effects of a serious diabetic condition which gradually diminished her ability to be active in community. After several years at Clyde assisting in the correspondence department and greeting guests, she transferred to Our Lady of Rickenbach Healthcare Center in 2013. It was there that a series of issues with her heart culminated in a crisis leading to her death at age 77. In her last days while hospitalized, Sisters Cathleen Marie, Dawn Annette, Rita, Sarah, Wilmarie, Hildegard and Lioba were able to visit, sang the Suscipe and prayed as death approached that God would free her from diminishment and suffering. She died July 23rd and her funeral was at our Clyde chapel with burial July 27th at Mt. Calvary Cemetery.