Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Mary Margaret Murphy said witnessing the religious sisters’ joy and hospitality served as inspiration for her own path.
Sister Mary Margaret said she “was raised at St. Albert the Great parish in south Minneapolis,” where she was baptized and attended its former elementary school. Its Catholic grade school was combined with four others in 1993 to create Risen Christ. She later attended Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield.
Since its beginning, Dominicans staffed St. Albert’s and it continues to be served by Dominican priests, Sister Mary Margaret said. When Sister Mary Margaret was attending grade school, Sinsinawa Dominican sisters taught there. “I found them to be very good teachers,” she said.
“I only lived two blocks from the school, (and) often in the 1950s, they would go out for walks in twos,” she said. Sometimes the religious sisters stopped to chat with her family on their porch or in their yard, she said. “The sisters were friendly, very joyful and very hospitable,” she said. They also served as an inspiration for her to become a sister, she said.
That inspiration led to Sister Mary Margaret, 80, celebrating 60 years as a member of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, based in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin; Sister Mary Margaret moved to its motherhouse there two years ago.
She has worked in the facility’s library and supports other retired sisters, saying, “you never really retire when you’re religious.”
Sister Mary Margaret has served in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as principal of Most Holy Redeemer in Montgomery from 2002 to 2010 and as administrative assistant at Bethlehem Academy in Faribault from 2010 to 2021. Her religious order founded Bethlehem Academy in 1865, the order’s first mission away from the motherhouse, she said.
Her time at Bethlehem Academy was “filled with a lot of history,” as she interacted with people who represented the fourth generation of attendees, Sister Mary Margaret said. “To have us still in their presence almost 160 years later, it was a gift to have been there,” she said. She recalled “wonderful support” from school families and the community.
The idea of religious life had “always been at the back of her mind,” she said, and it was something “not totally foreign” to her family. “My father had brothers that were Christian brothers in Ireland, and my mother had relatives that were clergy,” she said.
Her teachers were “nice human beings, friendly ladies that, as a kid, I thought ‘I could do this,’” she said. “I decided after high school to give it a try.”
She went on to a 50-plus-year career in education in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Texas, in addition to Minnesota, both teaching and in administration.
Looking back on her career, which included teaching math for many years, she said she loved when a child had “an aha moment” and said, “‘Oh, I finally get it.’ It’s like, ‘oh, thank God,’” she said.
One highlight of being a school administrator was mentoring new teachers, “helping them become stronger and … in some cases, more at ease with sharing their faith,” Sister Mary Margaret said. “Even though they weren’t necessarily teaching religion. But in a Catholic atmosphere of a Catholic school, it’s everywhere,” she said. “It has to be.”
Preaching is part of the Dominican charism, Sister Mary Margaret said, and preaching also takes place “in our lives.”
Asked what that looks like, she said treating everyone with respect, which in her life has included pastors, parents, students and teachers.
“I’ve had many more experiences than I ever would have dreamt of, in various groups across the country,” she said. “And that’s what I’ve tried to do, is to walk humbly, and justly and model that for people.”
