Owen (Joan) Lindblad, OSB, 90, Saint Benedict’s Monastery, St. Joseph

April 7, 1933 - November 18, 2023

The Eucharist of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, November 27, 2023, at the Sacred Heart Chapel, Saint Benedict’s Monastery, St. Joseph, Minn., for Sister Owen (Joan) Lindblad, who died on Saturday, November 18, 2023, at Saint Scholastica Convent, St. Cloud, Minn. Burial will be in the monastery cemetery. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Benson Funeral Home. Friends may call at Saint Scholastica Convent on Sunday, November 26, from 3–4:15 p.m. with a Prayer Service at 3 p.m. or for a Vigil Prayer Service at 7:30 p.m. at Saint Benedict’s Monastery. Visitation continues at 9 a.m. until the time of the funeral on Monday, November 27.

Joan Lindblad was born in Ashland, Wis., on April 7, 1933, the youngest of Elmer and Rose (Meyers) Lindblad’s four children. She attended Beaser Grade School in Ashland until the family moved to Bremerton, Wash., in 1940. In 1950, Joan and her parents moved back to Wisconsin, and she entered Saint Benedict’s High School in St. Joseph to complete her senior year of high school.

Joan entered Saint Benedict’s Monastery on September 2, 1950, was received into the novitiate on June 18, 1952, and was given the name Sister Owen. She made first monastic profession on July 11, 1953, and perpetual monastic profession on July 11, 1956. She celebrated her Golden Jubilee in 2003 and her 60th anniversary in 2013.
S. Owen earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a minor in philosophy from the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph. She also studied at the Diocesan Teachers’ College in St. Paul, Minn., and at St. Cloud University in St. Cloud. She later attended an Upper Midwest Writers’ Conference at Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minn., which led to her writing “career.”

As an educator, S. Owen served in various Central Minnesota schools in Luxemburg, Greenwald, Pearl Lake, Melrose, Maple Lake and at St. Anthony’s and St. Mary’s Cathedral in St. Cloud. She was also organist and choir director at Greenwald and Pearl Lake and often helped out in other parishes.

In the 1980s, S. Owen was employed at Creative Concepts in St. Cloud as senior writer for Escape to Minnesota Good Times magazine and was a feature writer for St. Benedict’s Center’s Carousel magazine. In the late 1990s, she was a history columnist for the St. Cloud Times. S. Owen also wrote for Vocational Biographies in Sauk Centre, Minn., and for more than 20 years, she critiqued and edited essays and poetry for a Japanese bilingual writer published in the Japan Times and elsewhere. She also wrote and published eight parish or family history books, and in 2000, S. Owen began working as an assistant in Saint Benedict’s Monastery Archives.

S. Owen is survived by her Benedictine community, seven nieces and nephews, and her grandnieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, as well as her brothers and sisters-in-law, Elwood, Jack (Dorothy) and Lyle (Phyllis).

Please direct memorial gifts to the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict Outreach Ministries.