Gwendolyn Nies of St. John’s Parish in Webster is pictured with Bishop James P. Powers after she was named the Superior Diocesan Council of Catholic Women’s Pax Christi Award recipient. Bishop Powers and Nies have worked together since the bishop’s years as a seminarian helping at St. Bridget’s in the late 1980s. (Catholic Herald photo by Jenny Snarski)
Jenny Snarski
Catholic Herald Staff
Writer’s Note: The Superior Diocesan Council of Catholic Women’s Pax Christi Award nominations are being accepted as of Feb. 1. Parish CCW councils and other women’s groups are invited to nomination women with “remarkable dedication and contributions in their respective parishes.” One nominee from each of the five diocesan deaneries will be honored at the 2025 SDCCW convention. Gwen Nies was selected as the 2024 Pax Christi Award recipient.
A lifelong catechist and youth minister serving the parishes of St. John in Webster, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Danbury and Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Crescent Lake, Gwendolyn Nies was honored as the 2024 Pax Christi Award winner at the Superior Diocesan Council of Catholic Women’s annual convention in Cumberland last summer.
In her nomination form, Nies was described as serving “her family, church and community in multiple ways, usually behind the scenes, not seeing anything remarkable in what she has given to others.”
Nies and her sister were born to parents who married later in life. Her mother started teaching in one-room schoolhouses in the 1940s near where she grew up in Milltown. Having contracted polio as an adult in 1950, Nies’ mother lived with its lingering effects, which taught her children awareness of others’ needs and empathy.
She converted when she met Nies’ father and gave birth to two daughters, the year before and after her 40th birthday. Her father had grown up on a farm in Minnesota during the Depression and left school after the eighth grade. He was good with numbers and worked as an independent businessman.
Nies’ path to – and her passion for – Catholic ministry was unique. Raised in Luck, a predominantly Danish Lutheran town where her father was known to be the first Catholic to move there, Nies and her younger sister did not have access to Catholic youth ministry. With the support of their parents, the girls attended Lutheran Bible Camp in junior high and Lutheran Youth Encounter in high school.
“Because of my experiences of faith in those venues,” Nies shared, “I wanted to bring similar things to the Catholic kids.” Acknowledging the role of providence in her life, she added, “God spoils me every day.”
She started college studying accounting but realized soon after that wasn’t for her. Nies graduated from St. Benedict’s in Collegeville, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts in Theology with an emphasis on pastoral ministry.
Her choice of pastoral ministry over a role teaching the faith in Catholic schools was motivated by seeing the amount of work her mother had to bring home and do in the evenings. She chuckled, noting that she never realized just how many nights she would work in parish faith formation.
Nies’ parish ministry jobs have spanned almost 40 years. She worked in New Ulm, Minnesota, for four years before serving in junior and senior high school youth ministry at St. Bridget’s Parish in River Falls from 1986-1991. She was also tasked there with leading the OCIA program and worked over three years with then-seminarian James Powers. After his ordination to the priesthood, they would collaborate again, for a period of 25 years, in the TEC retreat program around the Diocese of Superior.
Taking a break to learn computer skills, Nies worked at a bank while helping out with TEC retreats on the weekends. She joined the staff at St. John’s in Webster and its clustered parishes in 2015 at the request of then-Fr. Mike Tupa, who she had also known through years of high school retreats with TEC.
She has felt very blessed throughout life, with a strong sense of community and “so many wonderful friends.” Developing parish programs for adult faith formation has also been a personal mission and volunteers in countless capacities in her parish community.
Nies said if she were younger “and more tech savvy” she’d take better advantage of the positive possibilities of technology to teach and share the faith.
Throughout her career in ministry, Nies seen many changes. She feels that after Vatican II faith formation of Catholics in parishes was not given as much attention as needed, but has seen how in recent decades lay-run apostolic organizations have filled the gap. Resources like Word on Fire, Dynamic Catholic and the Augustine Institute’s Formed.org have offered adults a wealth of opportunities. Given the busyness of people’s lives, she believes they play an important role with their flexible accessibility.
With “so many more avenues to connect with,” Nies knows that adults need to make a committed choice to engage with these resources but encourages them to take personal responsibility for their faith formation. Like continuing education or training for one’s job, adults need to seek to grow in their faith moving away from the “Confirmation is graduation” mentality that can pervade parish religious education programs. She agrees that the role parents and families play in the transmission of the faith is irreplaceable.
Nies also recognized the vital role that volunteers play in the life of a parish. “You don’t have a convent full of sisters,” she commented. “Back in the day, even three religious sisters did a lot of stuff in the parish … We need to have dedicated lay volunteers – visiting sick and shut-ins, especially in clustered parishes” where the priests cannot get to everyone in need. She noted groups like the Knights of Columbus and the parish Councils of Catholic Women, who serve and raise funds for so many necessary causes and so many charitable organizations, both religious and secular.
She added that these volunteers “give the young people someone besides their parents who they can see as really being committed to their faith.”
