A funeral Mass for Sister Mary K Milne, OSU, will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Friday, Dec. 11, at Mary Queen of Peace Church in Webster Groves. Sister Mary K, also known as Sister Francine Marie, died Oct. 29. She was 90 years old and living at Francis Place Rehab and Healthcare Center in Eureka.
The daughter of Murray Francis Milne and Agnes Frances Domanosky, she was born Sept. 23, 1936, in Springfield, Illinois. She entered the Ursuline community on July 15, 1954, and professed her vows on Jan. 16, 1957. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the College of New Rochelle in New York and a master’s degree in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.
Sister Mary K led a remarkable life of service. She served her first four decades of ministry in education before ministering to Palestinian families in Bethlehem.
Sister Mary K first served primarily as a teacher and parish minister throughout the Ursulines’ Central Area. She taught elementary grades at Ss. Peter and Paul School in Alton, Illinois, from 1960-61 and elementary grades at Ursuline Academy of New Orleans from 1961-69, where she also was principal from 1964-69.
She served in a special apostolate in St. Mary’s, Missouri, from 1969-71, then taught at Ursuline Academy of San Antonio from 1971-74 and Ursuline Academy in St. Louis from 1974-78. She was in parish ministry at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in San Antonio from 1980-92 and was co-director of Villa Maria Retreat Center in Frontenac, Minnesota, from 1992-2000.
While in San Antonio in 1973, Sister Mary K was invited to be the program director of St. Mary’s University’s Graduate Theology Study Tours in the Bible Lands. She held that position for the next 34 years, helping to shepherd more than 1,000 people through the experiences of following Jesus and Paul through the sites named in the New Testament. In the mid-1990s, she was named a Dame of the Vatican’s Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre in recognition of her work.
Sister Mary K arrived in Jerusalem in August 2000 for a sabbatical that was intended to last one year but stretched into 10 years. Soon after her arrival, the second intifada (Palestinian uprising) began, cutting off almost all tourist groups and preventing many Palestinians from the Bethlehem area 5 miles away from entering the city to work. During the next few years, Sister Mary K witnessed many jihadist suicide bombings, brutality by the Israeli military and political oppression. She participated in protest groups, both Arab and Jewish, and smuggled food and medicine to Christian families in Bethlehem.
In December 2000 — realizing that many Christian children would not have gifts because their parents could not get to work in Jerusalem — she organized a project to ensure that would not be the case. Along with a group of international women, she packed and decorated gifts for a few hundred children. Remaining in Jerusalem, she led the Christmas project for Bethlehem school children for 10 years. When she returned to the United States, she continued to return to Bethlehem each Christmas for a month to supervise the project.
In 2016, Sister Mary K intervened in a dangerous situation between Israeli soldiers firing shots at schoolchildren who were throwing rocks at them. When she learned the incident had been captured on film and shown on an international broadcast, she turned the Christmas project over to the locals as she was concerned the Israelis would recognize her in the future. She knew she could never return but continued her support from the United States.
Of Sister Mary K’s ministry in Jerusalem, a local priest said of her: “She was the most fearless woman I have even seen — absolutely no fear of danger for herself when trying to help others.”
Interment will be in St. Peter Cemetery.
