(1914-2016)

Joy is the echo of Christ’s life within us. 

Baptized Kathleen Phillips, Sister Maura was born on April 25, 1914, in Defiance, Ohio. She was the third and last child born to James and Catherine (O’Donnell) Phillips. “I was blessed,” Sister Maura wrote her in autobiography, “with a wonderful mother and father. I never remember hearing an unkind word in our home.” She went on to describe her family.

My father, a strict puritanical Protestant, was born in Ada, Ohio, in 1877. He taught in the local school and later moved into the telephone business in Norwalk, Ohio, where he met and married my mother. My mother would never divulge the year she was born – not even for her grave marker. She used to say, ‘We are related to the kings of Ireland,” whatever that meant, since every proud Irishman loved to make the same boast. My father joined the Church in order to marry my mother.

Read more about Sister Maura (pdf)

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

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