3 Women religious honored for years of service

By Marlene Quaroni - Florida Catholic

• See individual biographies of the jubilarians

MIAMI | During a trip to the Dominican Republic, Sister Stephanie Flynn found her calling: to teach Haitian children.

“I went on a mission with the Teresians, an international lay association committed to evangelization, human advancement and social transformation,” she said. “We visited a sugar cane farm and found that the Haitians working there wanted to have a school for their children. I returned to Miami with a desire to help Haitian children here.

“A friend told me that I should go to St. Mary’s Cathedral School, which is predominantly Haitian,” Sister Stephanie continued. “I said, ‘No way. There are nuns there and I don’t want to work with nuns.’”

Sister Stephanie ended up teaching fourth grade at St. Mary’s School. And there she found that something was missing in her life.

“I saw that living in community was what I needed to do,” she said. “In 1993, I went to St. Augustine to the Sisters of St. Joseph motherhouse. I entered religious formation and eventually took my final vows in 2000.”

Sister Stephanie, 59, is now the principal of St. James School and supervising principal of Holy Family School, both in North Miami.

During a Mass Jan. 20 at St. Mary Cathedral in honor of the World Day of Consecrated Life — which is celebrated Feb. 2 — Archbishop Thomas Wenski recognized Sister Stephanie on her 25th anniversary of religious life. She was the youngest member of a trio of jubilarians that included Sister Clemencia Fernandez, of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul, celebrating 70 years; and Sister Kathleenjoy Cooper, of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrating 60 years.

Sister Clemencia, 87, a native of Cuba, entered the convent in Havana in September 1948. After completing her formation, she served poor orphan girls at the Real Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad in Havana for five years, until she was transferred to Mina Truffin School in Marianao. Following the Cuban revolution, she went to work in Puerto Rico.

In 1971, she was sent as a missionary to Istanbul, Turkey where she helped poor Christian girls until her transfer to La Paix Psychiatric and Geriatric Hospital, where she worked for 26 years. In 1998, she came to Miami. She now works for a food bank that helps families in need, helps with the missions of her community, and remains active in Christian formation of adults. She has accumulated many memories throughout her long vocation.

“I especially loved working with poor girls in Cuba who had nothing,” she said. “I keep those moments in my heart.”

Sister Kathleen Joy Cooper, 77, studied secondary education. Her graduate degree in marriage and family therapy, obtained at St. Thomas University, allowed her to blend her spiritual direction, pastoral counseling and formation ministries with studies in marriage and family dynamics. She serves on the RCIA team at Corpus Christi Church in Miami and on the pastoral team of the church’s mission of St. Francis and St. Clare.

The recipient of two kidney transplants, she said she is thankful to God for having come this far by faith. She likes helping couples with their marriage problems. “I’m the compassionate third party,” she said. “They recognize the other’s feeling through me.”

Archbishop Wenski told the congregation, which included religious from several orders, brothers and priests, that this year’s jubilarians have given the Church a beautiful witness of perseverance, commitment and fidelity.

“Your existence in the world, but not of the world, points to the possibility of a different way of fulfillment of one’s life, where God is the goal, his Word the light and his will the guide.

“Poverty, chastity and obedience lived according to the spirit of your own congregation’s rule of life are not simply renunciations, but rather the vows that have freed you for life’s journey,” he said. “Thank you, consecrated religious, for what you have done with God’s gift of life.”