On a recent Friday morning, Sister Emmanuella Ladipo distributed Holy Communion to students during a Mass for St. Augustine Catholic School in Washington, D.C., where she serves as the director of religious education and as a religion teacher.
Over the years, the Nigerian-born member of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus religious order has also served as the school’s president, principal and interim principal.
Reflecting on her work teaching at the historic Catholic elementary school, in an interview she said, “I wake up in the morning knowing God is there. I love what I do.”
A special aspect of teaching in a Catholic school, she said, is “you can talk about Jesus all day long.”
Moments after giving Communion to St. Augustine students at the April 17 school Mass, Sister Emmanuella was called back up to the sanctuary of the church, where in a surprise ceremony, it was announced that she is one of 10 Golden Apple Award-winning teachers for this school year in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
This year’s Golden Apple teachers will be honored at a May 21 awards dinner, and they will each receive a golden apple and a monetary award of $5,000 from the Donahue Family Foundation, which sponsors the annual award for teaching excellence and dedication to Catholic education.
In remarks during the surprise announcement, Father Patrick Smith, the pastor of St. Augustine Parish, praised Sister Emmanuella for her service to the school.
“She always says, if God needs me, I’ll do it. We thank you. You have truly lived up to your name, Emmanuella, ‘God is with us,’” he said.
In an interview after the Mass, Father Smith noted how the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus continue an important legacy there. For more than a century, Black Catholic women religious have been central to the school’s work.
St. Augustine Parish, regarded as the mother church for Black Catholics in the nation’s capital, was founded in 1858 by free men and women of color, some who had been emancipated from slavery. Those founders first established a Catholic school before building a church, in order to help their children gain a brighter future grounded in the faith, and today’s St. Augustine parishioners continue that legacy by supporting their parish school.
St. Augustine Catholic School is the second oldest Roman Catholic parochial school in the Archdiocese of Washington, and the first Catholic school dedicated to educating African -American children. After its founding in 1858, the school operated four years before mandatory free public education of African-American children became law in the nation's capital.
The Oblate Sisters of Providence, founded by Venerable Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange in 1829 in Baltimore as the world’s first order of Black Catholic women religious, served children at St. Augustine School for nine decades beginning in 1908. In recent decades, the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus have continued that service to St. Augustine School.
“Bringing the Handmaids here has restored the great tradition of religious in our school,” Father Smith said.
The priest praised Sister Emmanuella as “a missionary at heart.”
During the 2007-08 school year, she first came to St. Augustine School to serve as the principal there, and then for the next eight years, she served as the school’s director of religious education. A highlight of those years came in 2010, when 19 of the students she was teaching at St. Augustine School were baptized during the Easter Vigil at the church.
Between 2016 and 2020, Sister Emmanuella returned to Nigeria, where she served as the principal of a coeducational Catholic school operated by the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus that served children from pre-kindergarten through high school. She also served for one year as the vice principal for a girls’ secondary school operated by her order in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
During her nearly 44 years as a Handmaid of the Holy Child Jesus, Sister Emmanuella has also taught children in the African nations of Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Ghana.
“Children are the same everywhere, because they want to know about God,” she said.
In 2020, Sister Emmanuella returned to St. Augustine Catholic School to serve as the interim principal there during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the school adopted safety protocols and initially offered a hybrid learning model that combined in-class learning and online classes to meet the needs of students and families.
Reflecting then on how the school adapted to keep children safe, Sister Emmanuella said, “Everybody is looking out for the well-being of the other. That is part of Catholic education.”
Between 2020 and 2023, she served as St. Augustine School’s interim principal, and then as the school’s president for the next school year before resuming her work as the director of religious education for the students there.
Praising her “deep faith and profound humility,” Father Smith said, “Sister Emmanuella would serve as the president of the school or empty the trash in the cafeteria. She would do it with the same spirit and dedication, anything for God’s glory.”
Reflecting on her service to God at St. Augustine School, Father Smith said, “She’s committed to do His will, and it’s marvelous to behold.”
Dr. Anika Logan, the principal at St. Augustine School, also noted how Sister Emmanuella’s “flexibility and willingness to answer and serve in any area of our school is impressive.”
She said the woman religious lives out her calling and the school’s mission in her work to strengthen the school’s Catholic identity and foster its service to the community.
The Golden Apple Award, Dr. Logan said, “is a great way for our school and the Catholic Schools Office to say ‘thank you’ to Sister Emmanuella for her tremendous service to Catholic education.”
Two of her students interviewed at St. Augustine Catholic School likewise had praise for Sister Emmanuella.
Kaira Mbah, a sixth grader, said, “She encourages me to be a better person, because she’s always believing in me.” Sister Emmanuella “supports me, and she also helps me feel seen,” she said.
A key thing she’s learned from her religion teacher, Kaira Mbah said, is “that God is always with you, no matter how hard things go. He’s always going to be right here with me and help me.”
That point was echoed by St. Augustine fifth grader Arthur Dempsey, who said, “She’s told me that God is always in me, and I’m never alone, and God will always forgive me.”
Arthur Dempsey also emphasized that Sister Emmanuella “never gives up. She tells us to never give up. Even if it’s hard, we have to try our best.”
Sister Emmanuella’s own Catholic education left an indelible imprint on her heart. The example of the Our Lady of the Apostles sisters who taught her at a boarding school in Nigeria inspired her to become Catholic as an 11th grader and later to become a woman religious.
“The rosary was the first thing I fell in love with. Every time I prayed the Hail Mary, I felt so connected to the Blessed Mother,” she said.
Now Sister Emmanuella makes mission rosaries with her students, with five colors representing different continents of the world, and those rosaries are made available to parishioners at the back of the church and are shared with homebound members of the parish.
After receiving the surprise announcement about her receiving the Golden Apple Award, Sister Emmanuella stopped by the first grade classroom at St. Augustine School to pray with students and join them in singing “This Little Light of Mine.” Then she visited the third grade classroom, quizzing students about the mysteries of the rosary.
She smiled and explained afterward some ways she tries to motivate her students, telling the older ones that if they do well on their religion tests, they’ll get a pizza party, but if they don’t do well on the test, just their teacher will get a pizza. Younger students like simple rewards like animal crackers for learning their lessons, she said.
Reflecting on her work as a religion teacher and the school’s director of religious education, Sister Emmanuella said, “The mission is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus by teaching them to know the person and message of Jesus.”
Interwoven into the religious curriculum there is the importance of serving others.
“We give them community service and teach them to be responsible citizens,” she said. St. Augustine students serve as altar servers, lectors and choir members at school Masses. They help out at the parish and church, and they also participate in activities to help the poor in the neighborhood, and they visit and take rosaries to residents at a nearby apartment for seniors.
For Sister Emmanuella, the experience at her own Catholic school that changed her life continues to be a blessing in her life now as a religion teacher at St. Augustine School.
“I learn from the children every day,” she said.
Link to series with Golden Apple teacher profiles:
https://www.cathstan.org/series/2026-golden-apple-teachers-in-archdiocese-of-washington
