MIAMI SHORES, Fla.—Sister Adela Iuliana Langa, an alumna of Bowling Green State University and former member of Bowling Green St. Aloysius, was formally received as a novice of the Adrian Dominican Sisters at a special rite of reception held during the Palm Sunday liturgy April 17.

Dominican Sister Adela Langa, right, processes out of Cor Jesu Chapel with Dominican Sister Attracta Kelly, prioress, after being received into the novitiate. Walking behind them is Dominican Sister Pat Leonard, formation director. (Photo courtesy of Adrian Dominican Sisters)

The brief ceremony took place in the Cor Jesu Chapel of Barry University, Miami Shores, Fla., where Sr. Langa has been serving as an adjunct professor in the English Department. The Dominican Sisters of Adrian founded and continue to sponsor Barry University.

Dominican Father Mark E. Wedig presided over the Mass. During the liturgy, Dominican Sister Attracta Kelly, prioress of the congregation, formally received Sr. Langa into the two-year novitiate, a period of intense study and discernment in preparation for her profession of vows. In recognition of this important step, Sr. Kelly presented Sr. Langa with a copy of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Constitution, charging her to study it and to live out its precepts.

Among the guests at the ceremony were members of Sr. Langa’s local community: Dominican Sisters Sara Fairbanks, Luchy Sori and Rosa Reyes. Also attending were Dominican Sister Linda Bevilacqua, president of Barry; Dominican Sister Emmy Choge, a friend from Adrian; other Adrian Dominican Sisters; members of the Florida Mission Chapter; Sister Adela’s co-workers and students from Barry University; associates; Dominican Friars; and Janilyn Dennis, her friend from Bowling Green. Guests watching through live stream included family members and friends from Romania, Bowling Green, Chicago and Adrian.

“Continuing my discernment with the Adrian Dominicans is a walk into freedom,” Sr. Langa said. “With each choice I am my own individual and at the same time part of a community of women who walk side by side with women and men across continents and centuries. We are indeed members of one body, diverse by our very existence, and yet united because it is this diversity that daily transforms us and calls us into an intentional relationality with the entire universe.”

A native of Romania, Sr. Langa received her bachelor’s degree in English and English literature from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 1999 and her master’s degree in English from Bowling Green State University in 2005. She worked in the Office of Advising and Academic Success at BGSU.

As a candidate, Sr. Langa served in various ways on the Adrian Dominican motherhouse campus, from staffing the reception desk in Madden Hall to working in the Siena Heights University Theological Studies Program and volunteering at the Dominican High Schools Preaching Conference. Since January, she has ministered as an adjunct professor in the English Department at Barry University. Sr. Langa is to begin a summer internship at Barry in May, working in the Office of the President with the Organizational Effectiveness Department. She has studied theology throughout her candidacy year.