Page 22 - BusinessWest October 31, 2022

Women
IMPACT
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST Women of Women of IMPACT
IMPACT
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST WOMEN
WOMENof Impact For Nearly a Century,
Sister Mary Caritas, SP
Women of Good Causes
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Som e n o f
IMPACT
IMPACTWomen
By George O’Brien
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ister Mary Caritas, SP has always remembered something
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o
f
that one of the doctors, a cardiologist, at Mercy Hospital
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Wof Impact
She’s Been Fighting for
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doing
“He told me, ‘little nurse ... when we’re born, we’re born
told her while she was
nursing student more than 75 years ago now.
Women of IMPACT with a certain amount of energy; at the rate you’re going, you’re
IMPACT
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST
going to be dead by 40.’”
Turns out, he was wrong. Big time. And an entire region can be
very glad that he was.
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Sister Caritas was obviously born with more energy to expend than the rest of us, and she’s still proving that at age 99. She’s spent her whole life proving it, in ways large and small, highly visible or seen by only a few.
Space does not permit us to get into all that Sister Caritas has done during her remarkable life and career, at least in any detail. Hitting the highlights, she has been a hospital administrator — she
duty on o
ne
of the
floo
rs as a
22
“He told me, ‘little nurse ... when we’re born, we’re
born with a certain amount of energy; at
the rate you’re going, you’re going to be dead
by 40.’”
was president of Mercy Hospital for 16 years, and before that was administrator at St. Luke’s Hospital and associate director of Berkshire Medical Center. She’s also been very active with the Sisters of Providence and its broad mission, serving as president from 1960 to 1977, as vice president from 2009 to 2013 and from 2016 until today, and in other roles as well; she is now the oldest member of that order.
She has also been very active in healthcare, serving on the boards of the Sisters of Providence Health System, Trinity Health Of New England, Catholic Health East, the Massachusetts Hospital Assoc., the American Hospital Assoc., Partners for a Healthier Community, Cancer House of Hope, the New England Conference of the Catholic Health
Assoc., and perhaps two dozen other local, state, regional, and national institutions and organizations.
And she’s been active in the community, serving in capacities ranging from corporator of the former Community Savings Bank to trustee of the board of the Massachusetts Easter Seals Society, to chairperson (quite famously, by the way) of the Task Force on Bondi’s Island in the mid-’90s.
But it’s not the lines on the résumé — no matter how many there are, and yes, there are a lot them — that explain why Sister Caritas is a Woman of Impact. It’s what you can read between those lines.
It’s the story of an extraordinary individual driven at a young age to learn, teach, serve the community and especially those who are less fortunate, and simply make this region, and the world, a better place.
She has, in fact, said ‘no’ to a few people who have asked her
to take on an assignment because there are only so many hours in the day — she tried to turn down the Bondi’s Island Task Force, for example, but those asking wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. But almost always, she said ‘yes.’
And she became known not merely for serving, but for fighting,
Photo by Leah Martin Photography