September 19, 2025 // Bishop

Seven Sisters Apostolate ‘Attends to Needs of Priests’

Clare Hildebrandt

Reporter

At parishes throughout the diocese, it only takes seven women to kickstart a powerful devotion for the good of their parish priest.

These women are then members of the Seven Sisters Apostolate, which aims to show true love and compassion toward our parish priests by promoting prayers for their vocations.

Members of the Seven Sisters Apostolate commit to a Holy Hour on a specific day of the week, leading to dedicated prayer for a particular priest every day.

 

On Saturday, September 6, members of the apostolate met at the St. Felix Catholic Center in Huntington for a retreat, delving into the depths of their mission as spiritual mothers to the priests.

Bishop Rhoades celebrated Mass at the retreat, and in his homily, he mentioned both St. Carlo Acutis and St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, who were canonized the following day. He urged the sisters to meditate on “Verso l’Alto,” the motto of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, which means “to the heights!’

Lily Marquez, a longtime member of the Seven Sisters, spearheaded the need for a retreat for members in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.

“The mission for the Seven Sisters apostolate is to pray for the priest, because if we don’t have any good priests in the Church, you don’t have a Body of Christ. If you don’t have a priest, you can’t receive the body of Christ,” she said. 

Priests, Marquez said, are “truly people … who are chosen by God for their roles, but a lot of the time they suffer. They are alone and they struggle. As priests, they don’t have a family around. And as humans like us, they need that community where they are personally cared for,” she said.

With tears in her eyes, she continued: “We are spiritual mothers for them. We attend to them through prayer, because they attend to so many in their ministries. They do so much and give their lives.”

Marquez continued by saying: “Truly, we just want to say: ‘Good job! Well done, priests. We are proud of you.’”

Marquez told Today’s Catholic that the Seven Sisters retreat centers around the ways in which the women can grow in prayer and community through that prayer. She said the faithful of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend have taken up the challenge of providing spiritually for priests.

“The apostolate began seven or eight years ago in Tennessee,” Marquez said. “It has been spreading out, and now we have groups at so many of our own parishes here.”

Esther Terry, director of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend’s Office of Hispanic Ministry, told Today’s Catholic: “This came from Lily’s initiative, and those sisters themselves, the apostolate, Spanish-speaking sisters, wanted to have a retreat because the women in this group come from parishes all over the diocese. … They take a Holy Hour each day … [to] pray for their parish priest. So, some parishes, if they have three priests, they might have 21 women, because it’s seven sisters for each priest,” she said.

Terry added: “I’m just here to support them in their beautiful initiative, in this apostolate that the Lord has placed on their hearts.”

Clare Hildebrandt is a staff writer at Today’s Catholic.