Date of death: 11/27/2023
Saint Meinrad Class: SS 1988
Sister Mary Catherine Gagliano’s autobiography begins with
a summation of the backgrounds of her parents, both of
whom were the children of Sicilian immigrants. Alex, her
father, was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his
parents had settled and opened a strawberry farm. Her
mother, Genevieve, was born in Beloit, Wisconsin; a few years later, her family moved
to Freeport, Illinois.
When Alex was nineteen, he, his mother, and his uncle took a riverboat up the
Mississippi River in search of a better place for the family to live and somehow ended
up in Rockford, Illinois. Twelve years later, at a dance, he met Genevieve, who had
come from Freeport to Rockford to visit her sister and brother-in-law. Genevieve was
nineteen and Alex was thirty-one, which led both sets of parents to oppose their
marriage, but the couple was sure their love would withstand the difference in their
ages, and they turned out to be right.
Mary Catherine, their first child, was born on October 21, 1938, about a year after they
married. She would be followed over time by Frank, Bridget, and Virginia.
When Mary Kay, as she became known, was two years old and still the couple’s only
child – Frank did not arrive until 1943 – Genevieve took a job, and with both parents
now working, Mary Kay lived with her paternal grandparents and Alex’s siblings during
the week and went home on the weekends. “I did not like when Sunday evening came
because I was separated from my parents,” she wrote.
She attended preschool and kindergarten at the nearby St. Elizabeth Social Center and
began first grade at the public school directly across the street after her family moved to
a new home. That year was one of illness for her, including both measles and the
mumps, and because she missed so much school, her mother and her teacher decided
she needed to repeat first grade.
That repeat year was to be in a new school. The Gaglianos, now with three children,
moved yet again to a larger house, and Mary Kay was enrolled at St. Anthony School.
The school was staffed by Franciscan Sisters. “The sisters wore black, and their
convent was four or five blocks away, and they walked two by two going to school and
when they returned to the convent,” Sister Mary Kay wrote.
When the family moved yet again a few years later because the landlord was raising the
rent beyond what they could pay, school went from being half a block away from home
to eight blocks away. “I had to walk eight blocks to school one way and take my lunch,
which I did not like. Those sixteen blocks seemed like miles to me,” she wrote. The
arrangement only lasted a couple of years, however, because when the landlord’s
daughter was getting married, and he wanted the house for her and her new husband,
the Gaglianos had to move for a fifth time. This time, with the help of Alex’s brother,
they purchased a home … only a block away from the school.
Her high school years were spent at Bishop Muldoon High School, where she was
introduced as an eighth grader. She and her counterparts from the area’s elementary
schools were invited to come to the school for an afternoon, and her first glimpse of an
Adrian Dominican Sister made its impact:
As the bus stopped in front of the school, Sister Rita Cecile Boyle, OP, the
principal, was talking with Sister Clare Gleeson, OP, in front of the main door. It
was the very first time I saw a sister dressed in white, wearing a black veil, and
a fifteen-decade black rosary around her waist against the backdrop of a red
brick building and two huge white columns. I was impressed with the sisters and
the entire orientation. By the time the bus returned us to our school, I was
convinced Bishop Muldoon High School was for me.
She paid her tuition by babysitting and later by working at the Five and Dime Store on
the weekends.
The call to religious life came in the spring of her sophomore year when she was
walking outside on a beautiful day. “Suddenly, I became aware of the Lord’s presence
and heard His invitation to follow Him,” she wrote. “I remember making excuses that I
was not smart, I wanted to have babies of my own, and how could I leave my parents,
brother, and sisters. I did say I needed a year to think about it.”
Once that year went by, she said yes to God and entered the Congregation in June
1956 at the age of seventeen and a half. She became a novice that December,
receiving the religious name Sister Ann Virginia.
She found her canonical novitiate year quite difficult because her shy, introverted nature
did not mix well with having to read aloud at meals or lead prayer (plus, she wrote, “I
could not read Latin so I had a terrible time leading the sisters in praying the Office”).
Her independent streak made it hard to ask for permissions. Still, she made it through
and was professed in December 1957. After remaining in Adrian for the spring semester
to work toward her bachelor’s degree in English at Siena Heights College (University),
she was sent to Iron River, Michigan, to teach at St. Agnes School.
Her five years in a tiny town in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula (1958-1963) were
followed by a diametrically opposite experience: four years in Chicago, teaching at St.
Rita School. During that time, she completed her bachelor’s degree work, to be followed
by a Master of Education degree from De Paul University in 1974. Subsequent
assignments took her to Our Lady of Knock School, Calumet City, Illinois (1967-1969);
St. Philip Neri School, Chicago (1969-1971); and St. Celestine School, Elmwood Park,
Illinois (1971-1974). Then, with open placement allowing Sisters to discern their own
ministries, she found a position at St. Patrick School, Brighton, Michigan, and spent the
years 1974-1979 there.
While Sister Mary Kay was there, she developed some health issues, and her time of
convalescence led her to a new focus on her relationship with God (along with
developing an interest in creative writing) and to begin considering a ministry other than
teaching. She returned to the Motherhouse campus to serve as a driver because the
health care field interested her, but decided after a year to move on and spent the 1980-
1981 school year teaching at Trinity High School in River Forest, Illinois.
Then, she found her new calling: director of religious education at St. Mary Parish,
DeKalb, Illinois. She was there for eight years, earning a master’s degree in religious
education from Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology along the way.
In 1990, Sister Mary Kay moved to Westchester, Illinois, and began a new ministry as
director of evangelization at Holy Angels Parish in Aurora, Illinois. It was a fifty-four-mile
round trip each day, and the stress of the commute, especially driving at night, led her
to leave after a year. Sister Mary Kay took a position teaching English and theology at
Mother Guerin High School in River Grove, Illinois, but the challenges of teaching
English literature to the sophomores, on top of her mother’s health issues, caused her
to leave a year later.
Fifteen months of searching for a new job finally took her into campus ministry; she
spent nine years (1993-2002) with often-overlapping ministries at the College of
DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois; Joliet Junior College, Romeoville, Illinois; North Central
College, Naperville, Illinois; and Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois. She enjoyed
working with the students very much, but it was a bittersweet time too. During this
ministry, both of her parents died, Genevieve in 1994 and Alex in 1999.
After a sabbatical year spent in British Columbia, at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in
Henderson, Nevada, and at the family home in Lisle, Illinois, Sister Mary Kay began
ministering at St. Mary Nativity Parish in Joliet as its director of religious education. She
left there for various reasons a year later and spent time writing, tutoring a woman in
English as a Second Language (ESL), and serving as the Dominican Midwest Chapter’s
Justice Promoter, as well as ministering in vocation outreach. She then joined the
Archdiocese of Chicago’s vocation outreach team and spent two years in that ministry
before a cancer diagnosis meant she had to step aside. Finally, in 2010, she took on
what would be her final ministry: serving as an ESL tutor with a ministry run by the
Sisters of St. Joseph in LaGrange, Illinois.
Sister Mary Kay retired from that position in 2017 and lived in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for
three more years until returning to Adrian in 2020. She died at the Dominican Life
Center on November 27, 2023, at the age of eighty-five and in her sixty-sixth year of
religious profession.