Age 95
Sister Margaret Ann always saw her ministries as places of sacred encounters.
Born in County Cork, Ireland, Sister Margaret entered the Sisters of Mercy in Auburn, California, in 1952. An elementary school teacher for 12 years in the Diocese of Sacramento, California, she also served as principal for one year at Sacred Heart School in Sacramento.
For two years, she ministered as a vocation minister at Immaculate Heart Convent in Ardfert, County. Kerry, Ireland, a training center for young women wishing to join the Sacramento Sisters. She worked tirelessly visiting Irish schools, telling the Mercy story, and inviting young women to join the Sacramento mission. As Irish vocations dwindled, she helped to transition the Abbeylands mission to a retreat center.
Always drawn to caring for the sick, she spent the next twenty years as a hospital chaplain at Mercy Medical Center, Redding, and St. Elizabeth Hospital in Red Bluff, both in California. Her jubilee trip to the Holy Land deepened her thirst for prayer. After retiring from hospital chaplaincy, she relocated to Auburn, where she continued to bring persons to God through her ministry of spiritual direction. In her retirement, she nurtured her love for gardening, painting, and, most of all, prayer.