A lifelong dream comes true

It was Aug. 15, 1980, and a novice was pronouncing her first vows at Loretto Motherhouse as so many had done before her, except … the ceremony was held in the old novices’ dining room because the church was being renovated, and the novice was 85 years old.

She was Victoria Mudd, born in 1894 almost within sight of Loretto Motherhouse, daughter of two prominent Maryland settler families, the Mudds and the Thompsons. Her elder sister had joined Loretto in 1913 as Sister Mary Earnest. Three aunts were also Loretto sisters and Vickie, in her mid-20s, had decided to follow. “I even had my new shoes bought,” she later remembered. But when she told her younger sister, Laura, about her plans, Victoria discovered her sister had the same desire. The two realized one of them would have to stay home to care for their mother. “I told Laura she was the youngest, so she should go,” Victoria said years later. Laura replied, “I think she thought she’d take care of Mother better, and she probably did.” Their mother lived another 20 years. By that time Victoria was beyond the age for admission to Loretto. “So I quit thinking about it.”

But Victoria didn’t quit wanting to be with Loretto sisters. She worked at Loretto’s Bethlehem Academy, near Elizabethtown, Ky., for four years. Then “Miss Vic” became a mainstay at Loretto Motherhouse, living for 20 years in Stephen Badin’s brick house and doing “anything [the sisters] had for me to do” — canning, cleaning, sewing.

A broken hip in 1966 forced her into retirement at the Little Sisters of the Poor in Louisville. She was in the process of moving to the Little Sisters in Cincinnati in 1977 when the Loretto Motherhouse sisters urged Miss Vic to move instead to Loretto Infirmary. Just two years later she was invited to consider membership. At first Sister Januarius suggested she become a co-member. But Marie Lourde Steckler recommended she be invited to become a vowed Sister of Loretto. “When I was here as a novice,” Marie Lourde said, “Miss Vic was just like a sister, except they were in habits and she wasn’t. She said she always wanted to be a sister. I thought ‘Well, why can’t she be?’ I felt she had given to the sisters more than I could ever hope to give, just by her example.”

In the vow ceremony on August 15, 1980, Miss Vic said, “In the presence of God, the whole heavenly court and the Loretto Community, and moved by a lifelong desire to consecrate the remaining years of my life to the love and service of Jesus and the honor of his Sorrowful Mother Mary, I vow poverty, chastity and obedience, according to the Constitutions of the Sisters of Loretto.” Accepting Sister Vickie’s vows, Loretto President Marian McAvoy, said, “Through many years, you have already proved to God and this community your faithful love and dedication. Joy and gratitude reverberate across the land in each Loretto heart.”