Sr. Maureen O’Neill has been at Sister Visitor Center for 15 years and in that time has seen “a lot of changes.” On Monday, April 5, she announced her retirement affective April 30.

“The biggest thing now is this darn COVID,” she says. It and the distance it imposes has made the center’s work “so impersonal now” compared to how it once was, and she longs to once again know more about the individuals she helps.

Sr. Maureen said becoming a sister was always in the back of her mind even when she was in grade school because it “looked like a good life.” Indeed, that life has turned out to be a good one for her. In her 35 years as a sister she has taught in Nebraska and Kentucky, lived in many different places (“wherever the superior sent me”), and lived with different people. Most of the time she taught school, usually English to middle school students. While some find children in grades 6-8 difficult, Sr. Maureen not only “liked them” but “enjoyed them.”

She has enjoyed being at SVC where it’s “good to know you’re helping people.” Helping is “why you keep going,” she noted, even when working on problems that are “hard to solve.”

Sr. Maureen in younger years was an avid tennis player and still follows tennis on television today. Of course, as a former English teacher she enjoys reading.

She continues to appreciate sisterhood, experiencing sisters of different ages living together and praying together, and continues to always find hope in her faith, saying with confidence,  “God is not going to let us down.”