Sal Di Leo celebrates progress at retreat
By Lu Ann Hurd-Lof
Reporter/Photographer
 
Published Tuesday, October 24, 2006,
in the Park Rapids Enterprise

The chapel at St. Francis Lodge on Lake George is nearly completed, bringing Sal Di Leo a step closer to a prayer answered.

It has been seven years since he started working on the free retreat center for nuns and women considering joining convents.

When the project is finished, Sal and Beth Di Leo’s property will have a main lodge with room for six guests. Work on the chapel at St. Francis Lodge, a retreat for nuns on Lake George, is nearly complete.

A 50-something marketing consultant in Minneapolis, Di Leo has a long history with Catholic nuns. After his father left the family, Di Leo’s mother couldn’t financially support her 12 children. She dropped four of them off, including 9-year-old Sal, at the Guardian Angel Home orphanage outside of Chicago.

He was raised and taught entirely by Catholic nuns until he completed 8th grade when he relocated to Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Home in Boys’ Town, NE.

After he left Boys’ Town, Di Leo 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.

At 31 years old, 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.

After a 1998 reunion with Sister Paul, a nun from the Guardian Angel Home, he reconnected with his siblings, who were 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.

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, 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 said. ”It was very therapeutic and it made me realize that the nuns really made a difference.”

The reunions were the beginning of a healing experience for Di Leo, who said that by reconnecting with his past, he was able to build a future.

His plans to build a retreat took hold, rooted in the belief that the lodge would be a tribute to the women who raised him, and also 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,” he said. “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.”

After purchasing the property on Lake George, the Di Leos put in a road, cleared the building site, put in the well and septic system, brought in power and installed the “Stations of the Cross,” and built a grotto.

A year ago, the Di Leo family broke ground for the 14- by 20-foot chapel and celebrated with a dedication in May.

Now, the chapel has handsome wood siding and will soon be completed.

Although there are many similar retreats for nuns, none are free and many have strict schedules of prayer and learning. Di Leo’s lodge would be a place where Sisters and potential nuns can relax and reconnect with nature, and, in turn, their faith.

Working on the retreat became a family affair with Di Leo’s wife, an audiologist, and two daughters sharing his enthusiasm.

Profits from his book go toward the lodge and friends and others have contributed, too.

For more about St. Francis Lodge, Di Leo’s Web site is at www.stfrancislodge.org.

 (Some of this story is taken from an article published in the Park Rapids Enterprise in June 2004.)