Village Chronicles

Many people in the Warrenville area knew her from the many years she lived and ministered at the Warrenville Cenacle in the 1990s.

She moved to the Chicago Cenacle from Warrenville in 1998 and was transferred on November 4, 2008, to the Resurrection Life Center. Cenacle sisters who need assisted living have resided there for many years. Hospice care was provided in her room for about a month before she went peacefully to the Lord.

Her God-given gift of loving and caring relationships, her ready smile, her Irish sense of humor and her deep faith enriched all who knew her.

A wake was held at the Fullerton Cenacle in Chicago on Tuesday, July 26. A Mass of Christian burial followed. Her wish to have her funeral in the chapel that she helped to build was fulfilled. The Rite of Committal took place at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside on July 27.

Several weeks before her death, Sr. Foy told me that she knew she was going to be a Cenacle Sister when she was six years old. As she passed the New York Cenacle on her way to school one day, she told herself, “I am going to be one of those sisters when I grow up.”

In eighth grade, she saw a list in her classroom of all those who had entered religious life from the parish. She was intrigued by the name Sr. Kathleen Reid, Religious of the Cenacle, and was determined that some day she would meet her. Just before her senior year in high school, a young seminarian who grew up across the street from the Foys and was a relative of Sr. Reid, invited Rita to join his sister on a trip to the Ronkonkoma Cenacle on Long Island to meet her. After that, Rita went to visit Sr. Reid every week.

After graduating from Hunter College and working for some time, she entered the Cenacle on March 25, 1941, the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lady. (Annunciata was the name she had taken at confirmation.) She pronounced her first vows on September 20, 1943. The day of her final vows took place in Rome on her father’s birthday, May 12, 1949.

Returning to Rome in 1968, she was elected the first non-French Superior General of the Religious of the Cenacle, again on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25.

During the 12 years that she served in that position, many changes took place in religious orders around the world due to the Second Vatican Council. She was the perfect person to lead the sisters from a semi-cloistered order to an active order, a decision that changed their entire way of life. Her ability to unite the sisters around the world at that crucial time can be attributed to her natural ability to be a “Mother of All”.

Her greatest joy was to be able to meet and know all of the sisters of the Congregation and to love them, which she continued to do for the rest of her life.