OBITUARY | Sister Theresa Louise Wiseman, SL
A funeral Mass for Loretto Sister Theresa Louise Wiseman was celebrated April 6 in the Church of the Seven Dolors on the grounds of Loretto Motherhouse in Nerinx, Kentucky. Sister Theresa Louise died March 27 at Loretto Motherhouse Infirmary, about a month after her 100th birthday and just short of her 80th anniversary as a Sister of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross.
Baptized Mary Theresa, Sister Theresa Louise was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky in a family of five girls and two boys. She entered the Sisters of Loretto in 1940 and was received into Loretto in 1941, taking the name Sister Theresa Louise. She made her first vows in 1943 and her final vows in 1946. Sister Theresa Louise earned a bachelor’s degree in education, with a minor in philosophy, in 1954 from Webster College (now University) in Webster Groves.
Sister Theresa Louise was a primary classroom teacher all her adult life. In the St. Louis Archdiocese, she taught at St. Cronan School in St. Louis from 1943-47. In 1976, she joined her sibling, Loretto Sister M. Bernardine Wiseman, at Ascension Parish in Chesterfield, where she taught first-graders from 1976-84, then served as a secretary and sacristan and cared for the aged from 1984-93. Elsewhere, she served at Loretto-staffed schools in Illinois and Kentucky.
Sister Theresa Louise and Sister Bernardine both retired in 1993 and moved to Loretto Motherhouse. There, the Wiseman siblings were known for their presence at prayers and Mass and daily quiet hours in the chapel until their deaths. Sister Bernardine died in 2016.
Sister Theresa Louise is survived by her sister, Doris Wiseman of Nerinx. Burial took place at the Loretto Motherhouse Cemetery.