WEST ROGERS PARK — Happy 101st, Sister Vivian Ivantic.
The nun for the past 82 years with the Order of St. Benedict will achieve that milestone Thursday.
She first came to the St. Scholastica Monastery on Ridge Boulevard, where she still lives, when she was 14.
Back then, in 1927, there was only one farmhouse between the former St. Scholastica Academy and Howard Street, she remembered on Wednesday. Western Avenue was undeveloped, and the rest of the neighborhood was full of greenhouses.
It's not hard to see that a lot has changed since then.
The nuns' ranks have dwindled from as many as 200 across a few states, to just 36. The academy where they taught was shuttered in 2012, replaced by a charter school run by UNO.
She said the nuns were "sad" to see it close.
"We are so proud of our alumni," said Ivantic. "They have done so much for themselves, for society."
But in all that time since she joined the order at 19, she said, "I've been a teacher, a librarian — currently I'm an archivist" for the monastery, at 7430 N. Ridge Blvd.
"I've grown into it," she said of her time there. "We have a beautiful prayer life. Our Sunday masses are inspiring."
On a typical day, the sister goes to morning prayer at 7:30, then heads to breakfast. After that, it's up two flights of stairs to the monastery's archive, where she organizes old photos, letters and other documents related to the nuns' history in Rogers Park and elsewhere.
Evening prayer is at 4:15, then dinner with the sisters.
Before bed, she listens to the radio or music, and is sure to catch the 6 o'clock news.
She also uses a computer for her archive work and to write letters — and play card games, like Solitaire, she admits.
But "I do not Twitter, or any of those other kinds of things, I refuse to do that," she said. "I have enough to do."
But as she lives out her days at the monastery, she'll be praying that the church will allow women to be ordained as deacons and priests.
"There is nothing in the Bible that says women cannot be ordained priests," she said.
Sister Eleanore Hillenbrand, 89, now the monastery's resident librarian, said she learned everything she knows about the library from Ivantic, adding that she is "a remarkable lady."
"She is everything to me and to so many of us," Hillenbrand said.
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