The Philadelphia Protestant Home paid tribute to one of its residents, 102-year-old Sister Jane Coyle, of the Medical Mission Sisters.
Sister Jane professed her vows for the Medical Mission Sisters in 1949, and is the first member of the order to reach 75 years.
PPH honored her at an Oct. 3 event in its social hall. Fellow Sisters and Medical Mission Associates were in attendance.
Music played that was composed by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, of the Medical Mission Sisters. PPH’s Mike Berman created a picture collage shown on a screen. The afternoon also included cookies for everyone and cards for the guest of honor.
Fellow resident Marge Sexton interviewed Sister Jane, who reminisced about her 75 years as a Sister.
“It’s been more than fulfilling,” she said.
Sister Jane is the daughter of Irish immigrants and grew up during the Great Depression. She said she had a happy childhood, though was saddened by the loss of her mother due to a thyroid condition.
Sister Jane grew up in Atlantic City and graduated from Holy Spirit High School, educated by the Sisters of Mercy. She worked at Woolworth’s for $13 a week.
“That was a lot at that time,” she recalled.
Sister Jane also worked six years at Bell Telephone.
She became a Boston Red Sox fan in 1945 when the team held its spring training in nearby Pleasantville due to World War II travel restrictions. She remembers the great Ted Williams not being there because he was serving in the war. Her brother Billy was the batboy.
Sister Jane was a rare Red Sox fan in Atlantic City.
“Everybody else was for the Phillies,” she said.
Sister Jane remains a Red Sox fan, but isn’t thrilled that the team no longer has much red in its uniforms.
“If I had the energy,” she said, “I’d write and complain.”
Sister Jane remembers the Sisters being poor and working on the farmland at Medical Missions Sisters North American headquarters on Pine Road. A farmer and his son helped the Sisters perform chores such as planting corn and milking cows.
On the farm, Sister Jane supervised some Novice Sisters. She remembers one day when the farmer was “mad as a hatter” after he discovered the Novices pulled up lettuce and watered the weeds.
Sister Jane and some of the other Sisters who were city slickers weren’t used to farming.
“It was a big wakeup call,” she said.
It was also a lot of hard work. Sister Jane remembers, at the end of the day, feeling so tired as she and the other Sisters began their night prayers.
Back then, there were so many Sisters that they slept in bunk beds.
Sister Jane earned a sociology degree from Temple in 1970. She worked in, among other places, England and the Philippines.
Sister Jane is beloved for her work at Corpus Christi Parish in Baltimore, where she was the right-hand woman for the popular Father Frank Callahan. She performed pastoral work and later had larger responsibilities when Callahan was transferred to a larger parish.
Sister Jane was not permitted to preside at the liturgy or administer sacraments at Corpus Christi, but she offered prayers for the sick, made Communion wafers, trained parishioners to handle Holy Week activities and did much more.
Ultimately, she was asked to run the parish.
“I was already doing it anyway,” she said.
At Corpus Christi, parishioners asked her to hear their confessions, but she said that was not permitted and she could certainly not give absolution.
“They came anyway,” she said.
Sister Jane was a well-known figure in the community. One time, she gave the benediction at the graduation of a nearby art institute. She said art students are creative in an interesting way. She recalls a student accepting his diploma with a monkey on his shoulder.
“Nobody batted an eye,” she said.
Sister Jane has been at PPH since 2020, in personal care. The questions from Sexton and the crowd gave her a chance to look back on her 75 years of service.
“I’m so blessed to be a Medical Mission Sister,” she said. ••
