Louanna Marie Hopp was born to Harry and Agnes Pedersen Hopp on September 17, 1927, in Denver, Colorado. Her mother was from the island of Lolland in Denmark and her father was from Pennsylvania. She was one of four children, including her brother, Harry, Jr., and two sisters, Alice and Elizabeth.

The family moved often when Louanna was young, spending time in Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma. While she found changing schools difficult, she enjoyed learning. She loved to read. She worked at a dance studio in high school to pay for 4 years of ballet lessons. She had one year of college at Loretto Heights College.

Louanna was not raised in a Catholic family but was drawn to the faith as a teenager. “Even before entering the Catholic Church, I had a desire to serve God,” she said. “I felt drawn to the Blessed Sacrament, the Real Presence.” She converted to Catholicism in 1943, when she was sixteen.

Louanna’s conversion led to a religious calling, and she began exploring different contemplative communities. She learned about the Benedictine community in Clyde and, at the suggestion of her pastor, visited the monastery in the summer of 1946. “I felt their community was the type of life I would like and be able to live,” she said, “and I liked the secluded life of prayer and work.” She entered that summer.

Louanna made her first monastic profession February 10, 1948 and was given the name Sister Mary Reparata. She made her final monastic profession five years later, on February 10, 1953.

During her years in community, Sr. Reparata lived at the congregation’s monasteries in Clyde, Kansas City, and Saint Louis, Missouri; Mundelein, Illinois; and Tucson, Arizona. She served in the correspondence, vestment, and altar bread departments, in the printery, as portress, postulant director, vocation director, Clyde and Tucson subprioress, and on the General Council. She was on the staff of Spirit&Life magazine, responsible for layout and design. This took her to Tucson in 1993 when our Publications Center moved there.

 “Over the years, I moved according to the needs of others,” she said. “I am most grateful for the love and concern of my sisters and the health and ability to live and to serve within our communities.” Sr. Reparata had the opportunity to take ballet lessons again briefly in 1970. She shared her talent for ballet in a community production around the time of her 25th Jubilee.

Sometimes an event in life, a seemingly small thing, propels one into an unanticipated interest, which can develop into a personal mission. While on her first visit to her mother’s former home in Lolland, Denmark in 1978, she came across a roadside marker, indicating the birthplace of Kaj Munk. She learned that he was a Lutheran pastor, poet, playwright, preacher, and writer. He was a strong critic of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. He preached and wrote plays which encouraged underground resistance to Hitler after Nazi troops invaded Denmark in 1940. In 1944, Munk was taken from the pastor’s residence and executed, leaving his wife and five small children behind; his body was found by the side of a road.

Sr. Reparata became so interested in Kaj Munk that she learned Danish in order to read and translate his extensive writings. In 1984 she received permission to re-visit Denmark on the 40th anniversary of his execution. She was able to speak with some who knew him and with his widow, who later visited our monastery in St. Louis when she visited the U.S. Sr. Reparata later explained that “I found myself drawn into a close spiritual relationship with this great man.” Munk linked a deep affection for God with service to others and wrote: “To witness to God is first and foremost to live in such a way that life becomes better for others and that good is strengthened in them.”

While living at our Tucson monastery, Sr. Reparata became a member of the Danish Club, serving in several leadership roles. Her study of and involvement in her Danish heritage brought Sister Reparata much joy and was an important part of her life. “It helped to shape my calling, my mission,” she once said. “In prayer, I have taken the needs, both spiritual and national, of Denmark to God and feel it was a valid mission work.”

Sister Reparata had a dry sense of humor. It seemed to be always present along with a natural shyness and reticence to be the center of attention. She once said that some of the things she enjoyed were, “working when not under pressure, seeing a job well done, sitting quietly by myself or with a friend.” She also was a good photographer, doing photography and graphics for our magazine.

Sister Reparata moved from Tucson to Our Lady of Rickenbach Healthcare center in 2013 where her quiet and supportive presence was an asset. She was a proofreader for Spirit&Life magazine until a year before her death.

After some months on hospice, Sr. Reparata died quietly just after 6:00 pm on February 13th as Sisters Cathleen Marie, Mary John, and nurse Lorinda were praying with her. Sister Reparata’s funeral liturgy was celebrated at the Benedictine Sisters’ Adoration Chapel and burial in Mount Calvary Cemetery on February 18, 2019, in Clyde.