“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
– Psalm 119:105
Sister Jean Lind, 92, a Sister of Charity of Leavenworth (SCL) for 72 years, died on Saturday, September 20, 2025, at Ross Hall in Leavenworth. Born Donna Jean on August 29, 1933, in St. Paul, Minnesota, she was the youngest of three children of Helmar J. and Emma F. (née Gnidic) Lind.
Although born in Minnesota, Donna Jean grew up in Butte, Montana, a place she affectionately called “fabled Butte, America.” In her autobiography written during her 50th year in the SCL Community, she said that Butte “promoted an attitude of lifting one’s eyes from the stark cityscape, bitter winters, and hard times to notice instead the beautiful surrounding mountains and to celebrate and share the God-given gifts of survival, life, family, food, culture, education, country, and faith.” The diverse cultural life of the community, combined with the faith of her Catholic and Protestant ancestors, shaped her journey for the rest of her life. She attended Holy Savior and Sacred Heart schools, graduated from Butte High School, and began nursing studies at Carroll College in Helena on a scholarship from St. James Hospital.
At Carroll College, she encountered the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth and felt drawn to their spirit of prayer and service. “Seeds of vocation began,” as she described. From this experience, she desired to join the SCL Community. She made her commitment to religious life official on October 26, 1952, taking the name Sister Jean Regis. She later chose to simplify her religious name to Sister Jean.
Newly professed, Sister Jean continued her nursing education at St. Vincent Hospital in Billings, Montana, and at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she earned a master’s degree in nursing. Those years in Catholic settings deepened her expertise in obstetrical nursing and sparked a lifelong love for Scripture, liturgy, and theology.
For over two decades, Sister Jean ministered in health care, specializing in obstetrics as a nurse, supervisor, and instructor at Providence Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, and St. Vincent Hospital and School of Nursing in Billings, Montana. While at St. Vincent’s, she was instrumental in the planning, design, and implementation of a transport unit for infants needing critical care. Reflecting on her years in the nursing field, she once wrote, “It was rewarding to extend Christ’s compassionate care to patients in vulnerable and critical times of life.”
In 1977, Sister Jean discerned a new chapter in her vocation, stepping away from hospital ministry to devote herself more fully to prayer and solitude. She spent several years in houses of prayer and hermitages, including Cedars of Peace in Nerinx, Kentucky, seeking, in her own words, “to open myself more fully to the presence of God where all people are one, all united, and our cries are heard at the very heart of God.”
Her ministries later broadened to include tutoring in an inner-city literacy and GED program in Kansas City, Kansas. She also served for six years as local coordinator at the Mother House. In 1995, she moved to Sheridan, Wyoming, where she ministered to the elderly, sick, and homebound of Holy Name Parish for more than a decade. There she discovered a deep joy in pastoral care, bringing the presence of Christ to those often overlooked. This ministry allowed her to share and experience God in new ways.
In her later years, Sister Jean went on to provide volunteer ministry in Ashland and Billings, Montana, and at the SCL Mother House before moving to Ross Hall in January 2025. Through every ministry—nurse, teacher, contemplative, hermit, groundskeeper, tutor, coordinator, parish minister—she saw her life as “grace following on grace.”
Preceding Sister Jean in death were her parents; her brother, Robert Lind; and her sister, Shirley Roberts. Survivors include extended family, friends, and the SCL Community.
A vigil will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, in Ross Chapel of the Sisters of Charity Mother House in Leavenworth. A Rosary will be prayed at 9:45 a.m. on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, in Ross Chapel, with the Mass of Christian Burial at 10:30 a.m., also in Ross Chapel. Interment will follow in Mount Olivet Cemetery on the Mother House grounds. Memorial contributions may be made to the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Retirement Fund, 4200 S. 4th St., Leavenworth, KS 66048.
