(1932-2019)

“I can truthfully say that through my whole life I have seen clear manifestations of the love of God and of what He can do in and for His little ones.”

These words appear near the beginning of Sister Ana Feliz’s first St Catherine letter, written August 29, 1980. “In fashioning me He took poor clay and transformed it into a small and simple vessel,” the letter continued. “And guess what, by His power and grace it turned out right.”

Sister Ana was born April 27, 1932, in a poor and isolated mountainous area near San Jose de Ocoa in the Dominican Republic. It was “a place not much touched by man or machinery,” she wrote. She was the second child of Camino Feliz and Juana Encarnacion, but their first child died at age two. Ana wrote that her mother also suffered a number of miscarriages, probably from hard work and lack of medical care. Five other children besides Sister Ana survived: Mireya, Fran, Mirlita, Altagracia and Fatima.

Both parents were extremely hard workers who struggled to make a living on their small piece of farmland. Sister Ana wrote that her father’s coffee crop was barely enough to cover their expenses, and when emergencies occurred he had to sell coffee that had not even been picked yet. It pained Sister Ana to remember, even four decades later in writing her St. Catherine letter, that when she was six or seven years old, while playing in a box of beans, she accidentally got a bean stuck in her ear and her father had to sell his horse so he could take her to the town doctor.

Read more about Sister Ana (PDF)

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