April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
SISTER MAUREEN JOYCE REMEMBERING FRIEND,MENTOR, LEADER
"Having known Sister Maureen for more years than 40 years, she has been one of my most trusted colleagues and I have been grateful to count her as a dear and close friend.
"While her passing is a great loss for me and for all of us throughout our 14-county Diocese, we can still celebrate the tremendous blessing we have enjoyed in having known her and having worked with her as she truly and faithfully carried out the mission and love of Jesus Christ.
"Her life has certainly been an example of holiness and fidelity to the Gospel. True to her order, the Religious Sisters of Mercy, Sister Maureen has dedicated herself to living out the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.
"As much as Sister Maureen has been an example to me over the decades in her compassion for the poor and vulnerable, it is in these last several months that she has taught me more about faith and hope and love than I thought possible as she battled her disease with the same feistiness that has defined her through the years, and again she served as an inspiration for all those who know and love her.
"To say she will be missed is an unquestionable understatement."
--Bishop Howard J. Hubbard
• "Maureen and I shared a wonderful friendship for over 30 years and we vacationed together and shared dinner once a week for all of that time. She was a mentor and an inspiration to me before and during my 32 years at Community Maternity Services. She was a courageous woman, always willing to take risks and start new services and programs on behalf of the poor and vulnerable.
"I had the additional gift of spending the 10 months with her as she dealt with and fought her battle with cancer. Through it all, her primary interest remained for others. She asked every visitor about themselves and their families, and knew many details about their lives.
"She was a true daughter of Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, whose primary mission was to serve poor women and children. Maureen will live on in the lives of the many hundreds of people she served and worked with over the years."
--Sister Mary Ann LoGiudice, RSM, director of Community Maternity Services and a close friend
• "We're very happy right now because she's in heaven. She fought the good fight and now she's with God and she's got a smile on her face. She'll always be a part of our hearts. She's just a person who comes into your life and stays there. She had the foresight to see and meet all these needs that she did come across. I think she was loved by every person who met her."
--Sister Patricia Lynch, RSM, principal of Blessed Sacrament School in Albany and a friend since the first grade
• "Sister Maureen dedicated her life to serving others. How blessed we were to witness all of that love and peace returned to her so beautifully over the past 10 months."
--Mary Pat Hickey, Sister Maureen's assistant
• "She was a lovely woman. She's really going to be missed. For the size of the city of Albany, Sister Maureen had a disproportionate influence. She was a real national leader in so many ways. She never really veered from mission. Whenever she spoke, it was to reinforce the needs and the rights of the people they were serving."
--Jane Stenson, senior director for poverty reduction strategies, Catholic Charities USA
• When Sister Maureen sent Catholic Charities staff to New York City to help after 9/11, "it's what I came to expect of her. Maureen has always been a role model for me. She had a tremendous generosity of spirit."
--Robert Siebel, CEO, Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens
• "Sister Maureen Joyce combined homespun wisdom, Irish charm and a deep love for the poor. As a young Sister of Mercy, she was first director of Community Maternity Services and helped it grow throughout the Diocese. Pregnant teens loved her, their parents had full confidence in her and a capable staff thrived under her and she with them.
"At the national level, she was a respected collaborator among the Catholic Charities network and saw that Catholic Charities of the Albany Diocese had a role in addressing problems as big as 9/11, as draining as Hurricane Katrina and as far off as Romania.
"When it was most controversial, she reached out to help 'boarder babies' - children born HIV-positive. They languished in a New York City hospital because no one else would take them. Sister Maureen read about it in the newspaper, and all that mattered to her was that they were helpless children in need of care and time was against them. She led the people of the Albany Diocese in welcoming them, and thus was born Farano House.
"She loved the Sisters of Mercy and we loved her. Her family gave her to the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Mercy gave her to Catholic Charities, and Catholic Charities gave her to the poor. We're all richer for it."
--Sister Mary Ann Walsh, RSM, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a friend
• "Maureen showed me how to give and help the poor. We gathered every fall at Camp Rejoice, a Catholic Charities camp on Sacandaga Lake, and cleaned it to close it up for the year. One time, someone was leaving early while the rest of us were raking leaves and Maureen said, 'Let's bet to see how long we can keep her.' So she began telling this friend about every birthday she had - and she got up into her 60s before she stopped."
--Midge Church, a friend since childhood
• "She was a woman of faith and a woman of vision. 'No' wasn't in her vocabulary. She was a can-do person and filled with love and mercy."
--Sister Jean McGinty, RSM, director of St. Peter's Hospital home care and a former co-worker there
• "I always knew that if I called Sister Maureen [on behalf of] a person, that person would be helped. I took someone over and when we went in[to her office], she wasn't just my friend Maureen, but Sister Maureen, the CEO of Catholic Charities. And the way she was with this person was just wonderful.
"Some of us were nurses, and it was wonderful that we could all help her at the end [of her life] when they called us in."
--Ann Kelly, a friend since childhood
• "Sister Maureen encouraged and empowered everyone she came in contact with. Her response to situations was a quick assessment of what was needed immediately and then how it could be sustained. This was evidenced by her response to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina: Send money; but, more importantly, send people. It never was about, 'How are we going to pay for this?'
"[Her] passion was infectious. She always had a great sense of humor; she could be facing a crisis and her humor would disarm the entire situation.
"Sister Maureen worked tirelessly - late nights; always one if not two days on the weekends. When we would come into work on Monday morning, there would be mounds of work waiting. [Her] legacy lives on in each one of us: Go forth and make the world a better place!"
--Mary Olsen, Catholic Relief Services director for the Albany Diocese and Sister Maureen's former assistant
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