Sister Rose Therese Mann, OSF, knew from the time she was 13 that she wanted to enter religious life and she wanted to do it as a member of a Franciscan community. While she communicated with several of them in high school and college, it took just one visit to the East Peoria motherhouse of The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis to know that she had found what she was looking for.

“It just felt like home,” she said. “It just fit.”

Sister Rose Therese professed perpetual vows on Friday, Aug. 6, before Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, during a ceremony that took place in the chapel of the East Peoria motherhouse. At the same liturgy, Sister M. Veronica Morris, OSF, professed first temporary vows.

The assistant vocation director for her community, Sister Rose Therese will continue this ministry. She also sits on the OSF Healthcare System board.

The daughter of Rosemary and the late Christopher Mann, Sister Rose Therese grew up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Baptized Melanie Rose, she took Therese as her confirmation name and it was during preparation for the sacrament that she first got the idea of being a Sister.

“It never really went away,” she told The Catholic Post.

Sister Rose Therese visited the East Peoria Franciscans in 1998, but was still in school at the University of Calgary. After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1999 and doing seismic data processing for oil companies in Canada for a time, she entered The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in February 2003.

First temporary vows came on Aug. 6, 2005, and two years later she renewed those vows for three more years.

“When I made my first vows, I made them with the intention that I was staying forever,” Sister Rose Therese explained. “Although I was continuing to discern, most of that discernment has been actively seeking what God wants me to do. I was pretty much sure I was going to stay since I entered.”

Taking part in vocation fairs and giving vocation talks also has provided opportunities for her to think about her own vocation, she said.

While many people use the terms “final vows” and “perpetual vows” interchangeably, Sister Rose Therese said there is a difference.

“In marriage, for example, you make the vow ‘until death do you part.’ In religious life, you’ll be united in heaven, so we make vows forever. Our spouse is Jesus,” she said. “It’s true that Christ is the spouse of the soul, the spouse of the church. Religious life is a very specific way of doing that.”