Meet the Sisters



Let's get to know Sr. Helen Donahoe,


When Sr. Helen Donahoe first thought about making a retreat she was a junior in college in Brooklyn, N.Y. A priest friend offered to call retreat centers in and around the area. The Cenacle, out of the city on Long Island, was attractive to her but was fully booked and she was placed on their waiting list. She arrived home on the Thursday before her scheduled weekend retreat elsewhere to find a message from the Cenacle that, due to a cancellation, they had space for her. A happy circumstance! This retreat marked the beginning of her attraction to the Cenacle Sisters which ultimately resulted in her entering the community a few years later.

Sr. Helen is a Cenacle Sister for whom ministry is multi-faceted. When listening to her journey as a Cenacle Sister, one is struck by her astuteness in discerning where the Spirit calls her. From her early days of discerning religious life, Sr. Helen felt her calling was to be steeped in a life of prayer, engaged in the world, and present to others on their journey with God.

In 1963, after serving in various Cenacles on the East Coast, Sr. Helen was asked to help staff a relatively new Cenacle foundation in New Zealand. At that time, with Catholics making up only 3% of the population, Sr. Helen enjoyed the opportunity for ecumenical ministry. When she returned to the States thirteen years later she obtained her Masters of Divinity and Masters of Theology before returning to spiritual direction and retreat work. In various ministries, Sr. Helen companioned a wide range of people in their spiritual journeys. She enjoyed engaging in the formation of seminarians for diocesan priesthood and ministering as Religious Education Director in a Baltimore parish.

In 2001, Sr. Helen arrived in Chicago as a resident Provincial Councilor and subsequently was appointed the Provincial Liaison to the Cenacle Retreat and Conference Center. Four years later Sr. Helen was given the opportunity to embark on a different form of ministry as the House Coordinator for the Chicago Cenacle.

Years earlier Sr. Helen felt a call to serve the Sisters of her congregation more directly. At that time, she did not see a way to do this. With time and her openness to the Spirit, Sr. Helen has indeed found a direct means of ministering to her Sisters as Provincial Councilor and the House Coordinator for the Chicago Cenacle.

From Brooklyn to New Zealand, from the Eastern U.S. to Chicago, Sr. Helen has responded to the Spirit. Her open smile and listening ear convey her faith in and love for the voice she heard years ago in New York.

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Let's get to know Sr. Margaret Rohde,


I was strongly influenced by the Houston Cenacle Sisters attending retreats in 1971, which guided me in a deepening faith life, and a retreat in Everyday Life by St Ignatius of Loyola, directed by Sr. T. Heard, deepened my relationship with Christ. On January 1, 1995 I started my life as a Cenacle Sister.

I grew up in Texas with one younger brother and prior to becoming a Cenacle Sister; I worked 20 years for a large international telephone co. in Houston as a manager for the General Security Mgr. & Director of Computer Operations. I was a member of Nat’l. Guild of Piano Teachers and I taught piano. I was a member of The Houston Chapter American Guild of Organists and played for protestant and Catholic Church services and weddings. I was president of Texas Certified Secretaries. I raised two daughters and two sons, and I earned a 3rd degree brown belt in Aikido.

As a Cenacle Sister, I’ve had the privilege to serve in Houston TX, Ronkonkoma NY, Metairie LA, Warrenville IL, Gainsville Fl, Colima Mexico, Lantana FL, and West Palm Beach FL.

In 2008 I enjoyed being a retreat presenter on Lectio Divina to the Contemplative Outreach of New Orleans for a six-day silent retreat and in December 2008, I became a Certified Labyrinth Presenter.

Currently, I am completing 3 years as a chaplain/spiritual director for a leading national treatment center for drug and alcohol rehabilitation in Florida. I am an organist for a local Catholic Church. I am in my 2nd term serving on the Palm Beach Diocesan Commission for Religious. I serve as a member of the Community Advisory Board to VITAS, a national hospice not-for-profit. I help supervise facilitators in Spanish whom we’ve trained to give a 10-week adaptation of the spiritual exercises once a year in Colima, Mexico with another Cenacle sister.

I love everyone in the ministries where I am serving, and give God thanks

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Let's get to know Sr. Joyce Kemp,


When Sr. Kemp was eleven years old, she was coming home on the bus from her piano lesson. It was dark, and the streets were full of snow and ice. She exited the bus one block from her house. The traffic was heavy and she hesitated to cross the street in spite of the bitter, cold wind. Finally she decided to walk half way and stand in the middle of the street. As she reached the center, she heard brakes screeching and thought to herself, “I am going to be hit and die.” Then she felt a hand on her back pushing her and the next thing she knew, she was on the curb of the other side of the street. She thought she was dead and was just imagining herself there. She pinched her cheek. It seemed that she was very much alive. As she walked home, she had the strong sense that an angel had saved her. It was not her time to die because God wanted her to do something special.

Sr. Kemp was raised in the Wisconsin Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. It was very strict and she didn’t enjoy going to Sunday school and church every week. Because her mother had been raised Catholic, she believed that she should be Catholic, too. When it came time to apply for college, her high school counselor suggested she try Mount Mary College in Milwaukee. “That rich girls’ Catholic boarding school?” she asked. Her counselor said she could be a “day” student and she was sure they would grant her a scholarship. So she took the bus to the other side of the city for an interview with the dean of students. As she removed her coat, a button fell off and rolled across the floor. Embarrassed, she retrieved it and sat down. The Sister was very kind and considerate. She fell in love with the school immediately and felt as if she had come home, in spite of the fact that she had never met a religious sister in her life.

Starting out in a two-year course to prepare her to become a medical technician, the only way her parents would agree that she attend college, she realized she would probably kill people because her chemistry experiments never turned out the way they were supposed to. At the beginning of her junior year, she switched to English and history, not knowing what else to do. She also studied secondary education and became a teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools. During her junior year, her family moved to a house within walking distance of the college. They visited many Lutheran Churches, but none of them suited her. So she told her theology teacher she wanted to become Catholic. She was instructed by Father Sylvester Peters, a diocesan priest who had been assigned to the college right out of the seminary and spent the rest of his life there.

Looking back, Sr. Kemp has realized that she had a funny feeling she would end up being a “nun” from the time she was twelve and wasn’t even Catholic! She resisted this calling until she was 25. A fellow teacher talked her into making a retreat at the Cenacle and she was hooked. The retreat was in April. She asked to enter in July.

Sr. Kemp does not regret that decision. The vocation of the Cenacle Sisters is working with the spiritual formation of lay people. She has served more than 46 years working with children from three years through high school as a religious educator and retreat director, as a moderator of a young singles group, and the presenter of interactive retreats for adults. She has spent 43 years as a spiritual director and 46 years as a liturgist, making good use of her first passion in life, playing the piano. Since 1982, she has led the Intensive Journal Workshops created by Dr. Ira Progoff around the country. She has found that they are a neutral form of spiritual direction, using the evocation of inner awareness through meditation and writing down what surfaces as a tool for seeing one’s life path.

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Let's get to know Sr. Rita Anne Houlihan,


Rita Anne Houlihan might have seemed an unlikely candidate to become a Sister. She says she never thought of having a religious vocation except to be afraid she had one. Sr Rita Anne was a child during the Depression and a college student during World War II. When she graduated from Fordham University with her Masters in psychology, her interest ran more in the direction of buying some nice clothing and dating. She did, in fact, do just that for two years. She worked in vocational guidance, dressed well, dated and became involved in Catholic Action. Yet she felt dissatisfied.

She did eventually talk with a priest. She knew she did not want to teach but she was unable to say what sort of religious life she was called to. The priest suggested she see someone at the Cenacle. At first she was not terribly impressed, but she wasn’t drawn to anything else, she then decided to give them a try. She quickly became certain of her decision. The fact that she could get to know a Cenacle Sister outside of a classroom made an impact on her. As she so wonderfully puts it, “You could talk about God without first talking about geography.” She was attracted to the prayer life, the Spiritual Exercises, and the semi-cloistered nature of the Cenacle Sisters. When asked if she ever had any doubts, Sr. Rita Anne is firm in her answer, “No, once I entered as a postulant I realized it was ideal for me.”

Her fear had turned to commitment, a commitment which is healthy and evolutionary. One example of this is the fact that Sr. Rita Anne was one of the first religious women in the country to wear the modified habit. Certain of her vocation and willing to step into a new era, Sr. Rita Anne went off to the University of San Francisco in 1996 to get her Master of Theology in a modified habit.

Over the years Sr. Rita Anne has companioned many people throughout the world. Like other Cenacle Sisters, she spent time overseas – in her case giving retreats in England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Nigeria and Ghana. One of her more memorable times as Spiritual Director came in the 1970’s when Sr. Rita Anne was in California. She and other religious had gathered for an Ignatian Seminar. In solidarity with Cesar Chavez’s efforts on behalf of the farm workers, a group of them joined the picket line. Sr. Rita Anne was ultimately arrested. During her two weeks in jail, she put her time and ministry to good use by giving directed retreats to eight of her fellow inmates.

Before recently moving to the Chicago Cenacle community, Sr. Rita Anne was in Warrenville giving retreats, offering spiritual direction and running a series called Readings in Feminine Spirituality. Once Sr. Rita Anne gets unpacked and settled, she plans to put her years of experience and storehouse of wisdom to good use. It seems clear that Sr. Rita Anne’s enthusiasm for and commitment to her religious calling is as strong as it was 60 years ago when her fear turned to love for religious life.

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Let's get to know Sr. Jill Dearmer,


I was born in south east England during WWII, the first of seven children, six girls and one boy. We all went to Catholic school and I went on to Manchester University, where I graduated with a B.Sc. in Mathematics. It was in Manchester that I first met the Cenacle and I continued to make an annual Easter retreat at the Burnham Cenacle for many years.

After graduation, I worked for IBM for 14 years, mostly in the airline industry. With an international team of systems engineers and programmers from IBM and several different airlines, I was involved in the installation of the first computerized airline reservation systems outside the United States, at BOAC at Heathrow Airport. In 1973, I came on assignment to White Plains, NY, for 18 months, to work on the continuing development of airline software and in 1976/77 I worked in Tulsa, OK for 9 months. I travelled quite widely and thoroughly enjoyed my work.

In 1979, I left IBM and came to the United States to work for TWA in Kansas City. At that time, an inner voice was saying: “There has to be more to my Catholic faith than just going to Mass on Sunday.” I wanted to know God, not just know about God. I became very involved in my parish as a lector, Eucharistic minister and in the RCIA and I re-discovered the Cenacle in St Louis. I quit TWA in 1983 and spent 18 months studying in St Louis and working in a parish as RCIA coordinator.

In January 1985, I entered the Cenacle in St Louis. I spent my two year novitiate in Pittsburgh and after making first vows, I was assigned to our Cenacle in Vancouver, British Columbia. There I began doing spiritual direction and giving retreats and days of prayer. I also worked in the Prayer Enrollment Office.

In 1990, I moved to our Cenacle in Wayzata, Minnesota, where I worked in the Prayer Enrollment Office and later in the Treasurer’s Office, participated in the Spiritual Direction Training Program, completed an MA in Theology at St Catherine’s College and continued doing spiritual direction, directed retreats and working on retreat teams giving group retreats and workshops. In 1992, I made perpetual vows and after completing my degree in 1994, I moved to our Cenacle in New Orleans as treasurer.

After the sale of our beautiful house in Vancouver in 1996, I returned there to be part of a new venture, “a retreat house without walls”. In a comfortable family home, our community of four sisters continued to give spiritual direction and to welcome groups for mornings, evenings and days of prayer. We went out to parishes, colleges and other retreat centers to give talks, days of prayer and longer retreats.

In 2004, I moved to our retreat house in Warrenville, to be part of the ministry team. There, because of my computer background, I became involved in the development of a database program for prayer enrollment, ministry and fund-raising that could be used by all our houses. I also helped in the care of our sisters at Resurrection Life Center. With the sale of our beautiful property in Warrenville, I moved to our Cenacle in Chicago and continue my ministry with our sisters at RLC and to work on database development and to be available for spiritual direction and directed retreats and whatever new thing God will do next!