Sister Mary Elizabeth Fortin: Maryknoll

Sister Mary Elizabeth Fortin, an educator, health program coordinator and missioner to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Bolivia, Guatemala and the United States,  died August 18, 2013, at Phelps Memorial Hospital, Sleepy Hollow, NY. She was 96 years old and had been a Maryknoll Sister for 69 years.

Born on May 29, 1917, in Hartford, CT,  to John J. and Florence Moren Fortin, Sister Mary Elizabeth entered Maryknoll from St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish, Hartford, on September 7, 1943.  A 1934 graduate of Bulkeley High School, Hartford, she earned a B.A. in mathematics from St. Joseph’s College, West Hartford, in 1938 and an M.A. in education from Ateneo University in Quezon City, Philippines, in 1957.

Six months after entering Maryknoll, Sister Mary Elizabeth received her religious name, Sister Anne Marie, making her First Profession on March 7, 1946, and her Final Vows on March 7, 1949, at the Motherhouse.  She received her first assignment in 1947, travelling to the Philippines, where she taught religion, English and Algebra to high school students at Maryknoll College, Manila, until 1952; math, education and college religion from 1952-1958;  and served as high school principal from 1958-1961. In 1961, she was appointed director of Misamis Occidental School in Jimenez, where she taught college level religion to teachers-in-training, until 1966.

Sister Mary Elizabeth then taught bookkeeping and English at Maryknoll Secondary School, Hong Kong, from 1967-68, returning to Manila and Maryknoll College in 1968, where she taught high school English for the next two years.  In 1970, she became principal and English teacher at Maryknoll High School, Pakil, Laguna, Philippines, serving there until 1973. Follow a year as principal and English teacher at Maryknoll High School, Cateel, Philippines, she moved to Davao City, where she taught theology at San Pedro Hospital School of Nursing from 1977-79. She then joined the counseling office at Ateneo Medical School, serving there until 1981.

From 1979-84, she also worked as liaison in a program offering corrective surgery for crippled children  at Davao Doctor’s Hospital, and from 1981-82, worked with the Maryknoll Fathers’ Funding Program in Davao. In 1985 she became coordinator of a parish health program in Upi , Mindanao, Philippines,  serving there until being sent to El Salvador in 1989.

In El Salvador, Sister Mary Elizabeth worked in local parishes in Santa Cruz Analquite and Cuscatlan from 1993-1996, and Prados de Venecia from 1996-1998. She then returned to the United States in 1999, volunteering as an English literacy teacher in Waterbury, CT, from 1999-2002, then serving at a local parish in Arlington, VA, in 2003, until retiring later that year to the Maryknoll Sisters Center,  Ossining, NY.

Interviewed in 2003, Sister Elizabeth said she found religious life had “expanded my mind and my heart,” making her “more flexible and adaptable,” as well as “more sensitive to the needs of others,” and “more aware of the vastness of God’s plan for His people.”

Sister Mary Elizabeth is survived by a brother,  John Fortin, of Stratham, NH,  a sister, Florence Marino of Sarasota, FL  and other relatives. Her parents and another sister, Dorothy McDonough, predeceased her.

A Vesper service will be held for Sister Mary Elizabeth on Thursday, August 22, 2013, at 4:00p.m., followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at 11 a.m. on Friday, August 23, 2013. Both will be held in the Annunciation Chapel at the Maryknoll Sisters Center.  Burial will be in the Maryknoll Sisters Cemetery at Maryknoll, NY. Dorsey Funeral Home  in Ossining is handling the arrangements.