September 28, 2020

OBITUARY: Sister Mary Norberta Petrucci, FMSA

REGIONAL

 

HOLYOKE — Sister Mary Norberta Petrucci, a Franciscan Missionary Sister of Assisi (FMSA), died on Sept. 24.

Born Emilia, on Aug. 8, 1936 in Penne, Pescara (Abruzzo), Italy, she was the daughter of Dina Constantini and Giuseppe Petrucci.

On April 21, 1954, she entered the “Suore del Giglio” postulancy in Assisi, Italy, was invested with the religious habit on Jan. 6, 1955, and on Feb. 2, 1956, she professed her first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. She was first sent to assist at a Conventual minor seminary at Camposampiero near Padua and then to Loreto, to help provide for the children under the sisters’ care. There she renewed her vows on Feb. 2, 1959. Her perpetual vows were professed in Assisi on Jan. 6, 1960.

The congregation later became known as the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Assisi.    

Sister Petrucci came by boat from Naples, Italy to New York in January of 1961. She was one of the first group of four sisters who came to establish the congregation here in the U.S.    

Her first seven years in the United States were spent at the Friars’ Novitiate in Ellicott City, Md., in the kitchen and laundry, and within those years a second community was opened at the friars’ seminary in Granby, Mass. She ministered in Granby from May 1968 through February 1975, when her insight into establishing the congregation grew into finding and settling into a house in Holyoke to become our novitiate, vice provincial house and occasional retreat house. 

She was designated as the delegate of the FMSA General Council in the USA in 1978 when the sisters began to have chapters here every three years. By then three American women had entered the congregation.

Sister Petrucci served in Holyoke from 1975-1981, and often served as FMSA Councilor throughout her 59 years here. 

She ministered in Ellicott City from 1981-1984, then returned to Holyoke for two years before going to Rome for a sabbatical time. When she returned in July of 1988, she began working at the Basilica of St. StanislausBishop and Martyr in Chicopee, in the Ministry of Care, which had begun there in 1983 under the direction of Conventual Franciscan Father Marion Tolczyk, pastor. While she lived in Holyoke, she worked in Chicopee, and then, from July 1993-February 1995, she lived at Assumption Convent in Chicopee, while ministering at St. Stanislaus.  

From September 1995 through May of 1996, she and two sisters worked at Our Lady of Pity Parish in Staten Island, N.Y., as catechists, willing to do whatever was needed in service to a parish.

Sister Petrucci returned and was elected vice provincial superior and remained in Holyoke until 2002. When her term was over, she went to Holy Trinity- St. Stanislaus Parish in Niagara Falls, N.Y., with three other sisters, at the invitation of Bishop Edward Grosz. When that convent closed in December of 2002, she returned to live in Holyoke and commuted to work in the Ministry of Care in Chicopee until August of 2006. 

In August of 2007, she was assigned to the Mother Angela Convent in Chicopee and she continued to serve in the Ministry of Care until August 2020. She also took care of the church linens and often prepared meals for the friars. Even during the time of her illness, she continued her ministry by making phone calls and helping prepare mailings of “thinking of you” cards to the homebound and nursing home parishioners. She was known for her deep prayer life, compassion and warm hospitality. She returned to St. Francis Convent in Holyoke on Sept. 2, 2020.

She has four sisters, Maria, Ida, Eva and Antonietta. She was predeceased by her sister, Ana, and her two brothers, Francesco and Conventual Franciscan Father Donato, who died as a missionary in Colombia, South America.