Vera Duss
Vera Duss, better known in her adult work as Mother Benedict Duss, O.S.B., was an American-born French medical doctor and Roman Catholic nun, founder and head of the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut from 1947 until 1995.
Early life
Vera Duss was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of John Duss Jr. and Elizabeth Vignier Duss. Her paternal grandparents, John Duss and Susanna Creese Duss, were members of the Harmony Society, an experimental religious community in western Pennsylvania. She was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in France. She trained as a surgeon, earning her medical degree from the Sorbonne in 1936.Religious life
Duss became "Sister Benedict" when she entered a French Benedictine abbey, Notre Dame de Jouarre, in 1936, the day after finishing her medical training. She worked as a doctor and teacher in Jouarre, and went into hiding for part of the town's Nazi occupation during World War II. She was present when the town and abbey were liberated by American troops in 1944.Duss and Mother Mary Aline Trilles de Warren moved to the United States in 1946, and founded the Regina Laudis monastic community in 1947, near the farm of artists Lauren Ford and Frances W. Delehanty in Bethlehem, Connecticut. The community's founding inspired the movie Come to the Stable, starring Loretta Young and Celeste Holm. Mother Benedict became an abbess in 1975 when the community became an abbey. "The secret to keeping this place going was to do the next thing that had to be done – without wasting time on worrying," she told her biographer. "If you do something concrete, that opens the possibilities."