Sister Beatrice Carvalho, MM, missioner to Peru, celebrated 70 years with Maryknoll sisters at a Mass with the congregation on Feb. 9. The Mass at Maryknoll Sisters Center also marked the celebration of 85 years for one of the Sisters. Eleven Sisters, including Beatrice, celebrated 70 years; 10 celebrated their 60-year mark and five celebrated 75 years with the Sisters who serve the needs of the poor, the ailing and the marginalized in 25 countries worldwide.
Maryknoll Sisters’ official mission began in 1912, when they became the first group of Catholic Sisters in the U.S. founded for charitable work overseas. Today they have approximately 500 members from 18 nations serving worldwide.
Sister Beatrice was born in Hawi on Hawaii Island and entered Maryknoll at its motherhouse near Ossining, NY in 1944. She came to Ossining from St. Anthony’s Parish in Wailuku and made her final vows on March 7, 1950. The Hawaii native is a 1950 graduate of Mary Rogers College and holds a bachelor’s degree in education.
Sister Beatrice’s first assignment was teaching first grade in a Maryknoll mission school in Nicaragua. She then taught catechism to tuberculosis patients in Panama. In 1955, she was named director of Colegio de San Antonio, a secondary school in Puerto Armuelles, Panama, a position she held until 1961. She then served as direction of a commercial school in Mexico City, from 1961-1967 and followed by teaching English in Puebla, Mexico, from 1967-1971.
In 1971, she returned to Hawaii, where she worked at St. Anthony’s School in Wailuku, teaching Spanish, English and religion, serving as Guidance Department Chair and class counselor, as well as working as development secretary and an affiliate member of the congregation’s Central Pacific Region. From 1980-1982, she worked in the Treasury Department at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York, and from 1982-1985 as part of the Center Council.
In 1986, Sister Beatrice was sent to Guatemala, where she worked with the poor in Mezquital, a squatter settlement located on the outskirts of Guatemala City. In 2001, she was named a co-director of the congregation’s orientation program for new sisters, serving at their Chicago, IL, location until her retirement in 2006.
Photo of Sister Beatrice courtesy Maryknoll Sisters
Comments
comments