Maryknoll Sister Madelon Marie Mullen served Hawaii as teacher, parish minister

Maryknoll Sister Madelon Marie Mullen

Maryknoll Sister Madelon Marie Mullen, who served most of her six decades in religious life as a teacher, parish minister and hospital chaplain in Hawaii, died at Maryknoll, N.Y., on Oct. 28. She was 85 and a Maryknoll missioner for 62 years.

In 1972, Sister Madelon Marie described her calling as both limitless and challenging. “I firmly believe that there is no dearth of opportunities to concretely proclaim that one’s hope lies in Jesus Christ,” she wrote. “Under God, we can always do what we really want to do but we must expect to suffer as we attempt to live the words we speak.”

Marie Theresa Mullen was born in Scotland on Aug. 4, 1921, one of eight children of Jane Boyle Mullen and James A. Mullen. When she was two, her family immigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn.

After high school she attended business school and landed a job with the finance department of the U.S. Army Port of Embarkation, Brooklyn. She entered Maryknoll on Sept. 6, 1944, receiving the name Sister Madelon Marie. She pronounced her first vows on March 7, 1947.

Sister Madelon Marie made her final vows on March 7, 1950, the same year she earned a bachelor’s degree from Maryknoll Teachers College and took an assignment to Maryknoll’s Philippines Region.

Of her first day of her first mission in Palau, she later wrote: “I found myself standing before a class of ungraded students ranging in ages from seven to 17 — all with smiling eager faces. However, they didn’t know any English and I didn’t know a single word of Palauan. I prayed desperately, ‘What do I do now, Lord?’ Somehow we got through the day, and the year, together. I have no doubt that the students taught me more than I taught them — but we did laugh a lot!”

Sister Madelon Marie also worked in Lucena and Manila in the Philippines before being assigned in 1958 to the Pacific Region, of which Hawaii is a part.

Sister Madelon Marie’s first teaching assignment in Hawaii in 1958 was the 10th grade at Maryknoll High School in Honolulu. From there she went to St. Ann High School in Kaneohe where she taught theology, English and English literature.

In 1970, she returned to Maryknoll Center in New York for congregational service and study at St. John’s University, where she received a master’s degree in scriptural studies and religious education.

Sister Madelon Marie returned to Hawaii in 1974 to begin pastoral work as a religion teacher, religious education coordinator and coordinator of the Rite of Christian Initiation at St. Ann Parish in Kaneohe and St. Anthony Parish in Kailua.

From 1989 to 1993, she was a hospital chaplain at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

She retired in 1994 to St. Anthony Parish where she volunteered for a variety of parish ministries.

Suffering from severe macular degeneration which greatly limited her ability to see, Sister Madelon Marie returned to the Maryknoll Center in 2001. Since 2002 she had two bouts with cancer and this year fractured her hip.

Her funeral and burial at Maryknoll, N.Y., was on Nov. 2.

Sister Madelon Marie is survived by two sisters, both of whom are Sisters of Saint Joseph, Sister Ann Jane Mullen and Sister Jane Mary Mullen, and her brother James Mullen of Florida.