(1924-2019)

Now that she has gone before us, well marked with the sign of faith, she adds her value from heaven, cheering us as we refuse poverty and indignity, making sure God sees what we are doing and blesses us, and interceding for our work to rebuke evil and make poverty recede. Even recede by one half an inch.

These words are excerpted from an email sent to Adrian by Father Rick Frechette, CP, to be read at the wake service for Sister Philomena Perreault. Father Rick and Sister Philomena had spent many years working together in Haiti, right from the start of the Our Little Brothers and Sisters orphanage (Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs) which Father Frechette helped found in 1987.

Marie Therese Perreault was born on July 30, 1924, in Manchester, New Hampshire, the youngest of five children – the others being Lucien, Rita, Irene, and Leo, who was killed in World War II – born to Arthur and Marie (Arel) Perreault, French-Canadians who had immigrated to the United States. When she was two, her parents divorced, and she and her siblings were all sent to an orphanage. Her mother took her (and only her, out of all her children) back for good when Sister Philomena was ten years old.

Sister Philomena’s next stop was Eureka, California, after she completed her elementary education. She went to work at a medical clinic while attending high school and actually did not complete her schooling until years after the usual age for doing so. A retreat at the Vallombrosa Center in Menlo Park, California, in 1949 connected her with Sister Kevin Ryan of the Dominican Sisters of Everett, Washington (later to become the Edmonds Dominicans), and she ultimately decided she wished to become a religious.

Read more about Sister Philomena (pdf)