Sister Mary Rita: R.I.P.

  

    

 

Last week I attended a Mass for Sister Mary Rita, a Dominican sister, who had been principal of Our Lady of the Assumption school in Fairfield from 1979-1996. My six children attended that school. For some years when my four daughters were at Assumption, I coached the girls’ softball team and got to know Sister Mary Rita a little better than usual. As well as an outstanding principal, she was a strong supporter of girls’ sports. 

Every year at Assumption there was a sports banquet, and on one occasion I was asked to say a few words about my team. I recall looking out at the assembled parents with their children and thinking that they were sacrificing their lives for their children, and then I saw sister Mary Rita’s smiling face, and the realization struck me that she was giving her own life for other people’s children year in and year out. 

A multitude of people like her will never be officially canonized, but canonized saints are just the tip of the iceberg of people who have  led lives of service. Below is a brief summary of her career from the Mass program. *

Sister Mary Rita Sweeney, OP of the Dominican Sisters of Hope, Ossining, New York, died on November 20, 2022 at the Wartburg, Mount Vernon, New York. She was 96 years old….Sister Mary Rita entered the novitiate of the Dominican Sisters of Newburgh, New York on September 8, 1956, made her First Profession June 13, 1958, and Final Profession August 21, 1961. She earned two Master’s degrees, one in business education from Columbia University and another in religious studies from Providence College. Sister Mary Rita was involved in education for many years. She taught at St. Thomas school in Pleasantville, New York (1960-1963), was a business teacher at St. Mary High School in Paterson, New Jersey (1963-1965), at Our Lady of Lourdes High School in Poughkeepsie, New York (1965-1968), and at Pope Pius XII Regional High School in Passaic, New Jersey (1968-1969). Sister served as principal at Assumption School in Fairfield, Connecticut (1969-1970), was formation director at Mount Saint Mary Convent in Newburgh, New York (1970-1971), executive to the Dominican Sisters in Newburgh (1974-1979), and principal at Assumption School in Fairfield, Connecticut (1979-1996). Sister Mary Rita served as secretary to the leadership team of the Dominican sisters of Hope in their administrative offices in Ossining, New York from 1996 to her retirement in 2011.

 

During her lifetime religious nuns were routinely ridiculed, even vilified on stage and screen, but Sister Mary Rita stayed the course and ran the race. Well done, good and faithful servant.

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*Note. The OP after Sister’s name stands for Order of Preachers, the name of the religious order founded by St. Dominic almost 1000 years ago. Rather than being solely devoted to prayer and contemplation in secluded convents and monasteries, the Dominicans, as the followers of Dominic became  known, were required to go out into the cities to preach and educate as they still do today.