(1941-2026)

Sister Francine Barber, baptized Frances Jeanette Barber, died on Saturday, October 31, 2026, at the Dominican Life Center in Adrian, Michigan. She was 85 years of age and in the 58th year of her religious profession: 34 in the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of Edmonds, Washington, and in her 24th year in the Adrian Dominican Congregation.

Sister Francine was born in Pueblo, Colorado, to James Franklin and Corrine Charlotte (DeFord) Barber. She graduated from Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in education/foreign language from Western Washington State University in Bellingham, and a master’s degree in pastoral studies/religious formation from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri.

Sister Francine ministered for more than 10 years in education in Seattle. She served the Edmonds Dominican Congregation for six years as formation director and for three years on the Leadership Team, both in Edmonds, Washington. Sister ministered for six years in lay ministry formation at the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, followed by five years as pastoral associate for volunteers in local parishes in Seattle. She also served for four years as the Director of Catechesis/Formation for the Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado. Sister Francine served as a faculty member with the Catechetical Certification Program in Seattle and later for 11 years as a spiritual director and retreat leader at Assumption Convent in Seattle. She became a resident of the Dominican Life Center in 2022.

Sister was preceded in death by her parents, her half-brother Leo William, and her half-sister Margaret Barber Beard. She is survived by other loving family members and her Adrian Dominican Sisters.

Visitation will be held from 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in the gathering space of St. Catherine Chapel. The Vigil Prayer will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in St. Catherine Chapel. A Funeral Mass will be offered in St. Catherine Chapel at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. Prayers of Committal will be held in the Congregation Cemetery. 

Those who are not attending services in person are welcome to participate via live stream at https://adriandominicans.org/Live-Stream.

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan, 49221. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Anderson-Marry Funeral Home, Adrian.

Sister's Memorial Card (PDF)

 

Left to right: Frances, circa 1944; 1962 graduate of Western Washington University, Bellingham; Frances with her parents, James and Corinne Barber, on Entrance Day, 1965; Sister Francine, ministering at St. Luke School, Seattle, Washington

LEFT: From left, Sisters Cele Gorman, Sharon Park, and Francine Barber. RIGHT: Members of the 1998-2003 Leadership Team of the Edmonds Dominican Sisters, before the merger with the Adrian Dominican Sisters, are, from left, Sisters Dorothy Berg, Francine Barber, Carolyn Roeber, and Michele Kopp (Prioress).

LEFT: Members of the Metanoia Mission Group during the 2015 completion of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter, shown from left: Sisters Molly Giller, Mary Katherine Drouin, Patricia Benson, Francine Barber, Teresa Disch, Marilyn Barnett, Leonor Esnard, Mary Kathryn Cliatt, Beverly Bobola, and Christa Marsik. RIGHT: Sister Francine Barber during her years in lay formation ministry for the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, 1990-1996.

Members of the 2016 Golden Jubilee June Crowd are: back row, from left, Sisters Durstyne Farnan, Attracta Kelly (Prioress), Theresa Mayrand, and Sandra Exley; middle row, from left, Sisters Romona Nowak, Janet Stankowski, Maria del Rey Plain, Frances Nadolny, Barbara Rund; and front row, from left, Sisters Judith Silva, Carol Weber, Kathleen Schanz, Sally Ormsby, Francine Barber, and Mary Trina McCormick.

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(1936-2026)

Upon the occasion of her 70th Jubilee in 2024, Sister Evelyn Piché was asked to describe what her years in religious life had meant to her. Her answer was:

Everything! My whole life has been under the guidance and grace of Divine Providence. In a word, my consecrated life has been SACRED to me. I have never been disappointed by the God of Surprises who has always and in all ways treated me with care and gifted me with abundant blessings!

Sister Evelyn’s relationship with God was established early in her life through growing up in a loving family. Born on July 19, 1936, in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, she was the third of David and Ethelyn (Allard) Piché’s nine children. Donald, the oldest, was ecstatic to have a new baby sister because his first baby sister, Phyllis, died when she was eighteen months old. After Evelyn came six more children: Edward, Thomas, Robert, David, Carol, and Jane.

All the children attended St. Paul on the Lake School in Grosse Pointe Farms for all twelve years of their elementary and secondary schooling; in fact, there was a Piché sibling enrolled at the school for thirty-three consecutive years. There, taught by Adrian Dominican Sisters and seeing their joyful spirit, Evelyn began to seriously consider religious life in her senior year when the parish priest challenged the class: “If anyone of you has ever thought of becoming a priest or sister, now is the time to give it a chance.”

Two members of her extended family had already become Adrian Dominicans: Sisters Marie Neil (Beverly) McEachin, a first cousin, and Grace Raymonda (Elizabeth) Huetteman, a second cousin, who left the Congregation in 1977.

Evelyn visited Adrian not long before graduation and the experience cemented her desire to enter the Congregation. She graduated from St. Paul High School in June 1954 and soon thereafter was on her way to the postulate.

“My brothers told my father that I would be home in a week,” she wrote. But she stayed the course, and that December was received as a novice with the religious name Sister Rose David.

Read more about Sister Evelyn (PDF)

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, MI, 49221. 

Sister's Memorial Card (PDF)

Vigil and Funeral Recordings

Recording of Sister Evelyn's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by clicking on the three dots at the bottom right corner of the screen and choosing "Download." Worship Aid (PDF)

Recording of Sister Evelyn's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by clicking on the three dots at the bottom right corner of the screen and choosing "Download." Worship Aid (PDF)

 

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(1935-2026)

Near the end of her first autobiography written in the late 1980s or the 1990s, Sister Mary Bernard Lynch wrote:

As I reflected on my life experiences, so many memories – joyful, painful, grace-filled, laughable – come to mind along with the realization of God’s goodness to me. For this I say, “Thank You.” And to all those who have been part of my journey – as family, Congregation, friend, Companion, mentor, foe, spiritual guide, others – I say with St. Paul: “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you.”

Sister Mary Bernard captured many of those memories in her very detailed autobiography. Her life’s story began on January 21, 1935, in Chicago, as the first child of four born to James and Marie (Anderer) Lynch. She was baptized Marie Malgherita.

"James was of Irish ancestry, Marie the ‘league of nations’: German, Bohemian and Danish,” she wrote.

Her siblings were Therese, born in 1937, James Bernard (“Bernie”), born in 1939, and Regina (“Jeannie”), who came into the family in 1940. The children grew up in a close-knit, loving environment, and the Lynches and their extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and more regularly got together to celebrate holidays and other special events.

James was an electrician who worked hard and provided well for the family, although Marie handled the money and “ran a tight ship to make ends meet,” Sister Mary Bernard wrote. “During the war years we often spent hours in lines at the grocery stores. Our little red wagon was our means of transportation and toting of groceries. Two-car families did not exist at this time.”

She admitted in her autobiography to being a strong-willed child; on at least one occasion, she packed to run away, although she changed her mind when she realized she might get hungry.

After a year at St. Justin Martyr School, Marie finished her grade-school education at Little Flower School after the family moved several blocks farther south into that parish. Her high school years were spent at Sacred Heart High School, Little Flower not having a high school at that time.

One Saturday in eighth grade, as she was returning home from Confession, “I was struck with the knowledge that someday I would be a Sister,” she wrote. She kept that revelation to herself for the time being.

Read more about Sister Mary Bernard (PDF)

 

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, MI, 49221. 

Sister's Memorial Card (PDF)

Vigil and Funeral Recordings

Recording of Sister Bernard's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by clicking on the three dots at the bottom right corner of the screen and choosing "Download." Worship Aid (PDF)

Recording of Sister Bernard's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by clicking on the three dots at the bottom right corner of the screen and choosing "Download." Worship Aid (PDF)

 

Leave your comments and remembrances – if you don't see the comment box below, click on the "Read More" link.

 

(1934-2026)

Sister Carmen Álvarez’s long journey to becoming an Adrian Dominican Sister began during the more than two weeks she was imprisoned in her native Cuba for the work she was doing in her local parish.

As a young woman, Carmen volunteered to help out in the parish, and became the person responsible for teaching catechism and providing other help to the parishioners. After the priest was forced out by the Castro regime, she took on many of his duties as well.

“My education was limited, but my desire to live what was taught at home made me the person I am today,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I did not need a degree to do the work of God to hopeless people in a Communist country.”

Carmen Rose Álvarez grew up having Christian values modeled for her by her parents, Fermín Álvarez Guzman and Cora Alberto Álvarez, to whom she was born in the outskirts of Havana on September 28, 1934. Her sister Mirta came into the family two years later.

Little is known of her early years other than that she attended a private school, Arturo Montori, and earned a certificate in business education. During a retreat at some point, it became clear to her that she should answer Jesus’ “knock on her door” by ministering in her parish since at that time the priest could only come once a week.

When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, a crackdown on the Church began, and as her work with her parish grew after the priest was forced to leave, she apparently came to the attention of the regime. She refused to cease her activities, however, and at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 she was arrested and put in prison, where she spent seventeen days in miserable circumstances, including having to sleep on the floor and being given only one meal a day. During this time, she continued her ministerial work, encouraging the other prisoners not to lose hope and reciting the rosary each day with many of them.

She was released at two o’clock one morning and stepped outside the prison gates to find her father, who had been looking for her since her arrest, waiting in a rented car.

Concerned for her safety after what had just happened, her parents convinced her to leave the country, and she came to the U.S. to live with cousins in Miami, Florida. After she got there, she found her way to the Centro Hispano, a refugee center that was staffed by the Dominican Sisters of Catherine de’ Ricci, and offered her services to them. The experience inspired her to join their congregation. In September 1964, she traveled to the de’ Ricci Sisters’ novitiate in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, to begin her life as a religious.

Read more about Sister Carmen (PDF)

Memorial gifts may be made to Adrian Dominican Sisters, 1257 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, MI, 49221. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Anderson-Marry Funeral Services, Adrian.

Sister's Memorial Card (PDF)

 

Vigil and Funeral Recordings

Note: To view recordings with closed captioning, they must be viewed on our public video library rather than through the links below.

Recording of Sister Carmen's Vigil Service - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)

Recording of Sister Carmen's Funeral Mass - After clicking the link, download the recording by right-clicking on the video choosing "Save video as." Worship Aid (PDF)

Leave your comments and remembrances – if you don't see the comment box below, click on the "Read More" link.