Sister Jean Rosaria Fisch, OP 1932-2018 Some people come into your life and make you a better person. That was Sister Jean. She had a gift for reading people, and discerning their strengths and talents. Then with a warm smile and a gentle rub on the back she could get you to agree to any task. That was her magic. You never said no. These words began one of the many written messages and in-person

remembrances shared at the wake service for Sister Jean Rosaria Fisch. They were written by Lisa Martone, who had been a student at St. Rose of Lima School in Miami Shores, Florida, during Sister Jean’s time there as elementary principal. Sister Jean was born Rita Mae Fisch on May 24, 1932, in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Ervin and Helen (Umland) Fisch. She was the couple’s only child; when Rita was eighteen months old, Helen died of tuberculosis. Ervin sent Rita to live with her maternal grandparents until he remarried; his second wife, Iva, was his business partner in an appliance and furniture store in Appleton. The Fisches moved to Michigan in 1943, where Rita finished her elementary school years at a public school in Whitmore Lake and then went to high school in Ann Arbor. When the family moved to Florida in 1949, Rita enrolled at Rosarian Academy in West Palm Beach. It clearly did not take long after her arrival for her to discern she wanted to be an Adrian Dominican. In late December 1949, she wrote to Mother Gerald asking to be admitted, and entered on January 6, 1950. She entered the novitiate and received her religious name on August 8, 1950. After completing her canonical novitiate year, she was sent to St. Paul’s in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, to teach third grade. She was there for the 1951-52 school year and then was sent to St. Rose of Lima in Miami Shores, Florida, where she taught third grade for the 1952-53 school year. Several years in the Caribbean followed; she taught at the Colegio Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic from 1953 to 1954 and then was at Sacred Heart School in Santurce, Puerto Rico, from 1954 to 1960. Next came five years at Little Flower in Hollywood, Florida, during which time, in 1964, she completed her bachelor’s degree work in history at Barry College (University). Then, in 1965, came another assignment to St. Rose of Lima School, where she was elementary principal for the next fifteen years. She completed her master’s in administration/school supervision at Barry in 1971. In 1980, when the Congregation withdrew from Rose of Lima School, Sister Jean was asked to stay on in the parish. She became a pastoral minister and spent eleven years in that position before moving on to St. Gregory the Great Church in Plantation, Florida. She was director of parish ministries there from 1991 to 2006 and then a pastoral minister from 2006 to 2017. Father Michael Hoyer, pastor of St. Gregory’s, who had worked with her at both Rose of Lima and St. Gregory’s, sent a remembrance for her wake service that referred to her impact at the two parishes:

Sister Jean was the person most responsible for empowering the laity to become active ministers in the Church in the Archdiocese of Miami. As director of ministries for a large

Miami-Dade church, St. Rose of Lima, she introduced the laity involvement in a church that basically grew up with Irish pastors in South Florida. They were not accustomed to new ways of liturgy and laity involvement in the workings of a parish. Sr. Jean steered the course there and also basically wrote the handbook on parish councils and guided the church towards that model in the ’80s. In the ’90s Sr. Jean continued her start-up work to the largest parish in Broward County, St. Gregory the Great, from which she retired last year. Here her ground-breaking work reached to all facets of the more than 65 ministries she established. As a “people person” she was able to identify and persuade many people to not just register and attend Mass but to become active leaders. Sometimes this involved long times of persuasion and helpful hints on leadership. She always identified a person’s gifts and talents and suggested how these charisms could be used to grow the church, and it did grow. … Most importantly she left behind a framework and a legacy in which the Church in Miami will continue to depend on the laity in these difficult times to build up the Kingdom of God. Sr. Jean will always be remembered as an architect of the laity in God’s Kingdom in the Archdiocese of Miami.

In 2008, the Archbishop of Miami, John Clement Favalora, bestowed the Primum Regnum Dei Award, the archdiocese’s highest honor, on Sister Jean in recognition of her faithful witness and leadership in the parish. She shared the honor with her co-director of ministries, who had come on board in 2001 to share Jean’s growing workload as the ministry kept expanding. Jean suffered a stroke in May 2017 and after several weeks of hospitalization and rehabilitation came to the Dominican Life Center that July to continue her therapy. She became a permanent resident of the DLC in January 2018 and died there on September 8 of that year, at the age of eighty-six. She had been an Adrian Dominican for sixty-eight years. “I am so proud of our community and grateful to be a member,” she wrote in her 1996-97 annals – and that was a sentiment repeated over many years’ time in those forms. At the wake service held for Sister Jean on September 11, Sister Mary Ann Caulfield, her Chapter Prioress, remembered her as “a woman who was selfless in her service to others, soft spoken, and had a winning, charismatic smile.” Sister Mary Ann recalled Sister Jean’s faithful and dedicated ministry, her work in promoting and developing lay leadership, and how much she loved that work and the people to and with whom she ministered. “You have worked untiringly in the service of God’s people,” she said. “Now, Jean, rest in peace. You have fulfilled your work on earth. Your loving God has called you home and has welcomed you with the words you used so often: ‘Hi, darling! Love you, love you, love you!’” Many memories of Sister Jean were shared at the wake in addition to the remembrances by Lisa Martone and Father Hoyer quoted above. One especially personal one came from Patricia O’Neill, whom Jean had mentored to become an Adrian Dominican Associate and with whom Patricia had been “best friends and ‘sisters’” for more than twenty-five years. It was because of Jean that Patricia became St. Gregory’s RCIA coordinator. “Somehow, she also got me to ‘volunteer’ to take charge of the Lector ministry,” Patricia said. “… Sister Jean was very, very good at getting people to volunteer in the various ministries of St. Gregory. There was a saying around the parish: ‘Be careful if Sister Jean starts to rub your back. You will surely be taking on

another volunteer position.’ She started dozens of new ministries in our parish because she was able to draw out people and discern what gifts they had and how they could be used in ministry.” Sister Jean’s life was further celebrated with the funeral Mass the next day and with a memorial Mass at St. Gregory the Great Church on September 24. In her homily for the funeral Mass, Sister Carol Johannes remembered Sister Jean as “a beautiful woman, inside and out.”

Her gentle graciousness and outgoing spirit never flagged, even in her last days when communication was becoming difficult. She met everyone who crossed her path with a smile that said to us simply how happy she was that we were alive. … And why do we have such fond memories of Jean? All we need do is look at the readings for this liturgy celebrating her life.1 It’s clear to us that there could not be a better match for her than the text from 1 Corinthians, naming the multiple gifts that the Spirit scatters so generously among us. Jean had many gifts herself, but, as we heard last night, her real genius was her capacity to see gifts in others, to help others believe in themselves, to cultivate their gifts and to use them generously and lovingly for the building up of the Body of Christ. … As we look at the fruitfulness of her life in faithful, loving service, I think most of us would agree that God received a wonderful return on his investment in calling Sister Jean Rosaria. As we lay her to rest today, let us ask her to pray that some day the same will be true of each of us.

11Corinthians12:4-13,John15:9-17.

Center: Sister Jean Rosaria in the school office, 1966 or 1967

From left: Sisters Jean Rosaria Fisch (left) and Joan Leo Kehn. Sister Jean Rosaria, right, with her good friend, Annette Thornton

Members of the Sandpiper Mission Group, shown in this 1997-1998 photo, are, back row, from left, Sisters Beverly Bobola, Frances Madigan, Anne Gallagher, Jean Rosaria Fisch, Joan Leo Kehn, Elizabeth Ross, and Joan Mary Dwyer. In the middle row, from left, are Sisters Mary Rose Hochanadel, Joan Petz, and Kathleen Therese McCann; Associate Christa Rusch; and Sisters Mary Reilly and Joan Marconi. In the front row, from left, are Sisters Eleanor Dougherty, Mary L. Russell, Mary Dougherty, and Lorraine Sinn.

Back row, from left, Sisters Jean Rosaria Fisch and Frances Madigan, Associate Patricia O’Neill, and Sisters Joan Lee Kehn and Mary Therese Napolitan, and front row, from left, Sisters Lorraine Sinn and Elizabeth Ross

From left: From left, John Usyk, Sister Jean Rosaria Fisch, the late Monsignor Noel Fogarty, Adrian Dominican Associate Patricia O’Neill, and Patricia Usyk at St. Gregory the Great Church in Plantation, Florida. Sister Jean Rosaria celebrates her 85th birthday on May 24, 2017, at St Gregory Parish in Plantation, Florida.

Members of the 2000 Golden Jubilee Class – those who made reception on August 8, 1950, are: back row, from left, Sisters Carol Johannes, Mary Mackert, Paul James Villemure, Kathleen Sutherland, Mary Anthony Marelli, Jean Rosaria Fisch, Anne Elizabeth Monahan, Barbara Hubbard, Theodora McKennan, and Michael Claire Wilson; and front row, from left, Sisters Rina Cappellazzo, Joan Marconi, Diane Erbacher, Joan Petz, Anthonita Porta, Charlotte Francis Moser, Virginia Cushing, Michael Thomas Watson, Mary Louise Gass, Barbara Ann Mason, and Mary Jo Sieg. Not pictured are Sisters Joan Kathleen Lorencz, Joseph Eugene Fogarty, and Florence Marie Viaches.