2026 Vocations Awareness Supplement
Former Bloomington youth minister finds fulfillment as missionary sister
Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Sister Maria Gemma smiles with Father Thomas Kovatch, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Bloomington, on July 16, 2022, after she professed her first vows as a member of the religious community. She served as youth minister at St. Charles Borromeo from 2011—the same year Father Kovatch became pastor of the parish—through 2018, during which time the priest became “like a spiritual father” to her. (Submitted photo)
By Natalie Hoefer
Upon graduating from college in 2011, Ashley Barnett was torn between two parish youth ministry director job offers. One was in her hometown of St. Louis and the other was at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Bloomington.
Ultimately, she chose the latter, taking her mother’s advice to “stretch and go someplace new.”
She didn’t know at the time that the move would lead to a lifetime of “stretching and going someplace new” as Sister Maria Gemma of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT).
“I felt called to the missionary religious life,” says Sister Gemma, who will profess her final vows next summer. “I didn’t think my desires could be as fulfilled as they are.”
The sense of joy and peace she feels now is far different than the doubts and concerns she experienced on her discernment journey.
In time, Sister Gemma came to realize that Jesus “invites us to trust and take each step with him,” she says—even when that step seems to make no sense on the surface.
‘A catalyst in my relationship with Christ’
Raised in the Catholic faith, Sister Gemma studied theology and catechesis with a focus on youth ministry at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio.
“My life was really impacted by youth ministry,” she says. “When I was invited to a youth group in high school, it became a catalyst in my relationship with Christ. … I felt called to serve in the same way I was served, helping teens to know that Jesus loves them.”
Sister Gemma laughs when she shares a “one-sided deal” she made with the Lord during her senior year in college.
“I said, ‘OK, Jesus. I want to work fulltime as a youth minister within eight hours or less of home [in St. Louis], and I will say yes, but I would really like to know by the time I graduate,’ ” she recalls.
She applied for a position at a St. Louis parish that had an existing youth ministry program and was offered the job.
She also applied for the position at St. Charles Borromeo and received a job offer the week before she graduated—proving that “Jesus came through just as I’d asked!”
On the surface, the job with the existing youth ministry program in her hometown was the obvious choice. After all, she’d never heard of Bloomington, she would have to create the youth ministry program at St. Charles Borromeo, she hadn’t met the priest and didn’t know if he would support her role, and the pay was less.
Nevertheless, “I was so attracted to that job,” says Sister Gemma, who began her new job in August 2011.
Fortunately, the new pastor Father Thomas Kovatch, who arrived at the parish shortly after her, “loved our teens and showed up in their lives,” she says.
And he was impressed by Sister Gemma.
“She’s just a joy-filled, happy person who completely focuses on what she can do for others,” says Father Kovatch. “Everything she does, she does with excitement, joy and energy. The youths just loved her, and so did the parishioners. … I think it’s because she brings the light of Christ alive.”
Eventually, Father Kovatch became “like a spiritual father” to her, says Sister Gemma. “He was one of first people I talked to about being called to religious life.”
Grateful, affirmed, confident in Christ’s call
Between 2014 and 2018, Sister Gemma joined
Father Kovatch, parish youths and families on seven mission trips to Uganda.
“That changed my life,” she says.
Sister Gemma had thought about religious life at different points in her life but had been considering the vocation more seriously in the year prior to her first mission trip in 2014.
During a Mass on that visit, she remembers thinking, “I love you so much, Jesus. I’ll do whatever you want, go wherever you want.”
Kneeling in prayer after receiving Communion, “I heard Jesus say, ‘I want you to be mine forever.’ And I knew that meant religious life,” says Sister Gemma.
Despite doubts of having “courage to respond with my whole life,” she researched different types of orders and discerned a call to the missionary religious life.
She contacted a college friend who had become a SOLT missionary priest to discuss the order and its missionary lifestyle. Attracted by what she heard, Sister Gemma reached out to the head of novices for the SOLT sisters.
The two communicated for almost two years “about the community, my own discernment, what my prayer life was like, what my next step should be,” says
Sister Gemma.
But two issues held her back: health and money.
Sister Gemma, like her parents and siblings, was born with the genetic condition known as dwarfism. The physiological effects have caused her severe back pain, resulting in multiple surgeries.
“I was really suffering at that time,” she says. “I wondered if my health was strong enough to enter religious life, and the [SOLT] community was discerning that, too.”
She also had a student loan debt of nearly $75,000 to pay off before entering the order if she was accepted—something she greatly desired after meeting the sisters during a “come and see” visit.
“I really liked them,” Sister Gemma recalls. “I was attracted to how the sisters pray, how they love Our Lady and serve people. I felt convicted to join religious life in this community.”
After she was accepted by the order in November 2017, the news was shared with the St. Charles Borromeo community—including her need to pay off her debt before entering the order.
“It was certainly less than a month before my whole debt was paid off by people from the parish,” says Sister Gemma. “It was such a gift, and I felt so grateful and affirmed, but also confident that Jesus was calling me. I knew I was leaving with the blessing and love of all the people I served and loved in my time at the parish.”
She entered the SOLT community on Aug. 22, 2018, and began living the mobile life of a missionary.
Jesus’ ‘little gem’
Sister Gemma spent one year as an aspirant and one year as a postulant at the sisters’ convent in Seattle, Wash., while doing mission work with the order in North Dakota during the summers. She moved to Rosstown near Corpus Christi, Texas, for her two-year novitiate in 2020 and professed first vows on July 16, 2022.
Prior to the profession of first vows, novices submit to the order’s superior, known as the General Sister Servant, up to three possible religious names.
“St. Gemma is a saint I’ve had a devotion to for a long time—she’s the patron of people with back issues,” says Sister Gemma of the saint who suffered from spinal meningitis. “Her name means ‘little gem,’ and that’s what I want to be for Jesus—his little gem, someone he keeps forever.
“I was so excited when I was named Sister Gemma” during the vow ceremony, she says.
She draws inspiration from her namesake’s “love of Jesus in the midst of suffering” as she continues to deal with back pain. Sister Gemma had two more back surgeries, spending all of 2024 and the spring of 2025 recovering.
“She suffers a lot from her pain, but she masks how she feels so most people don’t know,” says Father Kovatch. “But she still has a high level of joy and happiness despite the physical problems she lives with and endures. … I think it’s a witness to others, that if this young religious sister can love God despite her suffering, why can’t I?”
Sister Gemma admits her genetic condition means she “can’t always do things as others, or I need more help,” she says. “But it’s not like Jesus sees my weakness. No, it’s ‘I love you and everything about you. I want even more for you. I want your greatest happiness and fulfillment.’ And sometimes that comes through the cross.”
‘Love is always our mission’
Outside of her time off for health issues, Sister Gemma served at an elementary school in Rosstown after her first vows. In July, she moved to Phoenix to serve as a parish youth minister.
“It’s so much fun to be doing youth ministry again—I love serving teens,” she says.
SOLT Sister Mary Emmanuel Schmidt calls her “a force to be reckoned with.” The Sister Servant for the American Region has known Sister Gemma since 2018. “She’s very dynamic, personable, extra friendly and outgoing. I think people just automatically feel very at ease with her, and it energizes her to be with people—the more people the better!”
Members of the SOLT order serve together in teams of priests, sisters and laity, a community that “is a good fit for the way God wired her,” Sister Mary Emmanuel adds. “She has a great love for the Lord and her vocation.”
Sister Gemma, who will profess her final vows next July, agrees.
“Love is always our mission—I love the Lord, he loves his people, and I love his people,” she says.
Her advice for women discerning religious life includes having a spiritual director and worshiping at daily Mass.
“And spend time in adoration,” she adds. “Being with Jesus in person is very important, and [adoration] is the one place where the noise quiets and there’s no other voice but his and yours.”
And trust that “when you take the next step, Jesus will be right there. He lives our life with us and in us—you never do it alone.”
With such trust, Sister Gemma has come to “realize that Jesus’ desires for me are so much greater than what I had for myself and what I imagined. He has strengthened my heart to be able to receive more of him.
“Wherever he wants to go is where I want to be.” †
