A lake of their own: Lake George land to become retreat for nuns

by Heather Leinen

Park Rapids Enterprise, June 23, 2004

There’s no denying it’s a beautiful piece of land - Minnesota lake country at its finest. A family of vocal loons lives on the lake, deer lazily snack on clover along the hillside and in the evening the sun dips behind the trees, casting its multi-hued blush across the water like paint on a canvas. Some might say it’s a little piece of heaven. And that’s exactly what Sal Di Leo is trying to achieve.

“Every day I wake up and I think about it and I wish it would be ready to go now, but I’ve had to learn patience,” says Di Leo, the land’s owner.  His dream is to turn the Lake George property into St. Francis Lodge, a retreat for nuns and women considering joining convents, a sort of spiritual bed and breakfast for working women of the cloth. Although there are no buildings currently standing on the property, Di Leo plans to start construction of a garage as soon as he has the funds. Then he will begin work on the main lodge, which will be three stories and have room for six nuns along with his family.

Though it may seem an odd choice of projects, Di Leo, a 50-year-old marketing consultant in Minneapolis, has a long history with Catholic nuns.  After his father left the family, Di Leo’s mother couldn’t financially support her 12 children alone. She dropped four of them off, including 9-year-old Sal, at the Guardian Angel Home orphanage outside of Chicago. There he was raised and taught entirely by Catholic nuns until he completed eighth grade, at which time he relocated to Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Home in Boys’ Town, NE.

After he left Boys’ Town, Di Leo now admits he was on a slow spiral into ruin. He became obsessed with making money and began experimenting with drugs. He lost his job and most of his family’s savings. He considered suicide.  At his lowest point, Di Leo realized his salvation was right where he left it - back at the orphanage.

A healing experience
“It started to click after I had a tremendous crash at 31 years old,” he says. “I was very, very depleted as a human being. I thought if I can make money, I can break the chains I was born into. And the money didn’t do it. It was when I crashed and burned that I finally realized I had to get back to basics.”

He called the sisters at the orphanage and, to his surprise, they remembered him. They encouraged him to return to the church and revive his faith.  Di Leo says the sisters’ advice made him realize what he had been missing in his life; it was something he’d had all along.
“It took me a long time to realize it, but (growing up in the orphanage) was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “When I went back to the values those nuns taught us… it makes a difference in a person’s life.”

In 1999 he self-published a manuscript about his life and the people who helped mold him, titled “Did I Ever Thank You, Sister?” The book was not only a memoir to pass along to his children and future grandchildren, but a sort of penance, a cleansing of the soul.  “That was my first real opportunity to put all the pieces together in my life,” he says. “It was very therapeutic and it made me realize that the nuns really made a difference.”

In his book, Di Leo describes his 1998 reunion with Sister Paul, a nun from the Guardian Angel Home.

Slowly but steadily, out walked an old nun with a cane. Once she cleared the elevator she looked up at me. I was directly in front of her.  “Hi, Sister,” I said with a smile. “Let me look at you,” she replied as she carefully studied my face. Then she smiled. “Tell me about your life, Sal,” she said as she turned me around and we headed slowly up the long hallway past more pictures of Jesus, Mary and angels.  “How much time do you have, Sister?”

“I’ve got eternity,” she said.

After his meeting with Sister Paul, Di Leo began turning his life around. He quit drugs and stopped obsessing about money. He reconnected with his siblings, who were now anywhere from 31 to 51 years old and scattered across the country. He visited his ailing mother for the first time in 20 years and finally made peace with the woman who had left him on the orphanage steps so many years ago.  As he wrote in his book:

Going back to see the orphanage again and old Sister Paul affected me in more ways that I could explain. It was the beginning of a healing experience for me to finally begin putting things to rest that I had been struggling with all my life.

By reconnecting with his past, Di Leo says he was able to build a future.

An investment in the future
Di Leo realizes the lodge is unique and that it’s a big project for one man to undertake. He says it’s the least he can do to thank the people who “gave me my values, taught me to work, taught me to be a good father.”

Not only is the lodge a sort of tribute to the women who raised him, it’s an investment in the Catholic Church’s future.  “I’ve always felt in the back of my heart, there is a need for more nuns in this country,” Di Leo says. ”If I can create a place for people to go and meditate and decide to become nuns, I have helped create people who are going to do what the world needs.”

He says there are many similar retreats for nuns, but none are free and many have strict schedules of prayer and learning. St. Francis Lodge will be a place where Sisters and potential nuns can relax and reconnect with nature and, in turn, their faith. The lodge, though not yet built, is gaining national attention. He says there is already a waiting list of more than 100 nuns from all around the country and he gets “two or three calls a week from the media.”

I have gotten so many e-mails and calls from nuns, and they say, ‘God bless you, this is exactly what we wanted,’” Di Leo says.  Now a husband and a father of two college-age daughters, Di Leo says his passion has become a family affair. “(The lodge) completely changed my family in so many ways. It completely took away our materialism,” he says. “It made us realize it’s not about things, it’s about people.”

His wife, Beth, an audiologist, agrees the project is not just a personal mission for her husband, but a journey for the whole family. “It’s a family project, certainly,” she says. “Sal is the real energized one of this, but it’s certainly a group project. It’s just been a really nice retreat as a family getaway, too.”

A labor of love
The couple admits the project is slow-going at times and has hit a few snags along the way. Although Di Leo says he conceived the idea for the retreat soon after writing his book, no buildings yet stand on the property. The main reason is not lack of effort - Di Leo admits he visits Lake George almost every weekend - but lack of funding. He estimates St. Francis Lodge will have cost well more than $500,000 by the time it’s finished.
Profits from Di Leo’s book go toward the lodge, but he has also relied on a lot of help from his friends. The architect who designed the lodge, David Engleson of Cunningham Group in Minneapolis, did the work for free. Area businesses like Kahlstorf Lumber Co. Inc., Gladden Construction Co., and Ken’s Backhoe Service have donated time and materials. And Di Leo says many individuals, after reading his book and viewing his Web site, have sent unsolicited donations.

But because private donations alone are not enough to build and run the lodge, Di Leo has come up with a business venture to create funding. He’s hoping Sal’s Deli Dogs, his troupe of lunchtime hot dog kiosks, will go over big in Minneapolis grocery stores. If successful, the kiosks would provide a steady stream of badly needed capital.

Besides fundraising, there is plenty of work to be done. The septic system is already in place on the property, the stairs down the steep slope to the lakefront are finished and a dock is installed. Di Leo recently began positioning hand-carved Stations of the Cross along a rambling path through the trees. “Every time I go up there, there’s a hole to be dug or a tree to be planted. It’s a labor of love,” he says. “We’re pretty excited about how far we’ve come in three years.”

Whether it be religion or a sense of duty that compels Sal Di Leo to create a relaxation point for women devoted to the church, it’s clear to everyone who knows him the dream for St. Francis Lodge is not just a passing phase. It’s a chance for him to pay his dues and make peace with his past.  “I feel very strongly that this is my chance to give back truly to God,” he says. “I’m a very artistic person, and this is my chance to create something beautiful. And I’m not a saint, but this is what I am, this is what I want to do. I want to give back.”

To donate to the St. Francis Lodge or buy a manuscript of “Did I Ever Thank You, Sister?” by Sal Di Leo, call or fax (612) 789-2795 or visit www.salsbook.com

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