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Sister Rose Christina Momm, SNJM
November 15, 1935 – May 16, 2024
Sister Rose Christina Momm, SNJM departed this life on May 16, 2024 in Albany, New York.
Sister Rose Christina celebrated 88 years of life and 69 years of her religious profession.
A Mass of Resurrection was held Friday, June 14, 2024, at Sisters of St. Joseph Provincial House Chapel in Albany, New York.
Interment followed at Calbary Cemetery in Glenmont, New York.
Sister Rose Christina Momm, SNJM
November 15, 1935 – May 16, 2024
Sister Rose Christina Momm (Eleanor Momm) died May 16, 2024, at Teresian House in Albany, N.Y., after more than seven decades of loving, and often surprising, service as a Sister of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.
The first daughter of Albert and Christine McOsker Momm, Eleanor was born November 15, 1935, in Annapolis, Maryland. Destined, along with her brother and sister, to childhoods as “Navy Brats” because their father was a career naval officer and Academy mathematics professor, Eleanor attended15 schools before the navy assigned the Momms to Key West, Florida. There for senior year Eleanor first encountered the Sisters of the Holy Names and was drawn to “the way they lived their lives.” She entered the novitiate in 1953 right after graduation and set out on her own special form of a “service career.”
With a keen mind and gentle personality, Sister Rose Christina quickly became a highly skilled teacher who maintained and expanded her skills by adding course work in all the sciences, embracing technology for teaching/learning early on, and earning NSF grants__all complements to her master’s in mathematics and Florida state certification in all the sciences and New York certification in mathematics. Most of her community “duty stations” were focused in Florida, but she also worked in Academy of the Holy Names in Albany, and at St. Gabriel’s in Washington D.C. She also served as the New York Province SNJM community treasurer from 1987 to 1993. No matter where she ministered and lived, she brought a strong commitment to her work, deep concern for her students, a passion for learning, a willingness to be there for others, and a wonderful sense of humor. She loved to travel and visited many places in North America, especially enjoying an extended experience with one of our sisters ministering in Alaska.
Her teaching drew Sister Rose into a warm attachment to Santa Fe Catholic High School and a surprising new path for her gift of service: While sharpening her skills in chemistry, she interned in a chemical business which ‘chanced” to have an employee caught up in a serious crime. She felt a quiet, insistent call from God to visit him, and overcame a strong reluctance, went to the prison, and was deeply affected at the setting, the processes, the dehumanizing culture. Thus began a decades-long call she felt to work with incarcerated people in Florida. During her time of prison ministry, Sr. Rose implemented a number of creative programs, but a major transformative project resulted from her bedrock insight that people need support to transition back into society. In 1979, she became the driving force (and founder) behind a program called Tampa Crossroads which assists men and women as they leave prison and rebuild their lives. Today the Crossroads remains a vital resource for “new life” for both the volunteers and the “clients” serving there.
When her health required it, Sr. Rose Christina moved to the CSJ care center in Latham in 2014 and then to Teresian House. The Sisters of the Holy Names deeply appreciate the prayerful atmosphere, caring staff, and community life in these final “homes” of Sr. Rose.
You are invited as The Sisters of the Holy Names celebrate the life and “new of Sister Rose Christina on Friday, June 14, at the 11:00 a.m. Mass in the CSJ Provincial House Chapel. There will be a “time of remembering” prayer before Mass, starting at 10:00 AM.
For those who wish to remember her in this way, donations in Sister Barbara’s honor and to extend her ministry may be made to the Sisters of the Holy Names, 1121 New Scotland Rd., Albany, N.Y. 12208