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Sept. 14, 2006
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At 98, Maryknoll sister continues to serve |
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Sr. Antonia, Marquette Medical School grad,
ministers to hospital patients |
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Sr. Antonia Maria Guerrieri, left center, is pictured at her diamond jubilee celebration in 1995 while she was serving on mission in Taiwan. The Maryknoll sister graduated from Marquette University’s medical school in 1935. (Submitted photo) |
MILWAUKEE — In her nearly 100 years of life, Maryknoll Sr. Antonia Maria Guerrieri, 98, has seen and served the world. If there is one thing to be certain, it is that this world traveler, now living and volunteering at Maryknoll’s headquarters in New York, is still living her unshakable call to serve.
Born Dec. 9, 1907, and raised in Massachusetts, Sr. Antonia was one of seven children, in a poor, yet loving household that was tight on money, but big on education.
“I had wonderful parents,” Sr. Antonia said in a telephone interview from Maryknoll, N.Y. “My father and mother were determined that all of us get an education, no matter what our plans were for after that. When I told my parents, ‘You don’t have to send me to college, I want to be a sister,’ they told me that first and foremost I would get an education, and I could decide what I wanted to do with my life after that.”
Sr. Antonia admits that her parents’ push for her to attend college was partly because they thought she was too young at the time to enter religious life. But for Sr. Antonia, that was no deterrent. For her, entering religious life was not a decision; it was simply in her bones.
“I knew that I wanted to become a sister since I was young,” Sr. Antonia said. “We had sisters that came and visited our parish, and I can remember one day, my sister and I were walking and we saw a pair of sisters. My sister turned to me and said, ‘I would love to be a sister.’ I said the same thing. And that was that. I made the resolution — I want to be a sister.”
Sr. Antonia was fortunate to sense where God was calling her to serve.
“I had heard about the babies in China that were getting ignored and neglected because nobody wanted them,” Sr. Antonia said. “I wanted to pick up those babies that no one wanted.”
In her parents’ tradition of education, Sr. Antonia first attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., graduating in 1929 with a bachelor’s degree. Before entering the Maryknoll order, her pastor contacted the mother superior and told her that Sr. Antonia had taken many science courses in college. He asked if she could attend a medical school. “Mother Mary Joseph said, ‘If she wants to go to medical school, let her go.’ My family was delighted. They thought I was too young to go to the convent.”
With the assistance of a priest from the Jesuit novitiate in her hometown, she was accepted at Marquette University’s medical school, where she was one of three women to graduate in 1934. She then served one year at the Milwaukee County General Hospital.
She recalled the day Prohibition was repealed in 1933 and the reaction in Milwaukee. At the time she was an intern at the general hospital.
“Milwaukee is a beer town and the day prohibition was repealed, the companies were giving out free beer in the city auditorium that night,” said Sr. Antonia, “and all of the male interns and residents wanted to go. I can’t drink anything like that, so they came and asked, ‘Would you cover my floor today?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ It was a slow day, and before that evening ended, I covered the whole hospital and they all went and got their beers.”
After a year at the hospital, Sr. Antonia joined the Maryknoll sisters and received her first assignment in 1939, a mission to China, where she remained until the Communist takeover in 1949.
“I was planning on staying there, despite what was happening,” Sr. Antonia said. “I figured I had nothing to be afraid of. But then I discovered after speaking to a patient one day that soldiers had taken her away after seeing her speaking with me and questioned her on why she was talking to a foreigner. They thought she was a spy. So I knew I wasn’t doing any good. I left as soon as I could.”
Next stop on her world tour was Korea, where she worked for six months while waiting to receive approval from the Maryknoll motherhouse to move to Taiwan.
“They had 80 doctors, and still couldn’t take care of all the crowds,” Sr. Antonia said of the clinic in Korea. “They were taking care of crowds that I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of.”
After her six months, Sr. Antonia moved to Taiwan, where she worked until the late 1990s, when she broke her femur and was sent back to New York to recuperate.
“One sister out of work is one thing,” Sr. Antonia said. “But having other sisters out of work to care for the one sister out of work is another thing.”
Sr. Antonia, however, was far from out of work. Even in her debilitated state she found another way to reach out to others — through hospital visits, a ministry she was called to when reaching out to a very sick woman during her first such visit.
“They thought I could comfort her,” Sr. Antonia said. “And I realized, I didn’t have to comfort her, she could comfort me. I knew then I wanted to do hospital visits, but I wanted to do them on my own terms.”
Limited by her walker, Sr. Antonia was confined by where she could go and how much she could do. When others recognized the difference she was making, she was asked to make it a permanent commitment, and was granted the leeway to travel to hospitals around the area, an activity she continues today.
“My work has always been charity work,” Sr. Antonia said. “I know what I’ve wanted to do and I’ve done it. And I know in my heart that I’ve gone and tended to all the right places.” |
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