LEWISTON — When she was just 8 years old, Mary McCarrick’s dad was dying of cancer.

A priest would come to their home every week offering solace.

It was just one of many inspiring experiences Mary McCarrick would have with people who had dedicated their lives to God — leading her to a vocation of her own.

Today she’s Sister Mary McCarrick, a Franciscan nun, honored earlier this month with an award from Daemen College at its annual Distinguished Alumni Awards Dinner.

McCarrick, executive director of Niagara Falls’ Heart, Love and Soul food pantry and dining room, has spent some four decades serving those in need.

“I was raised in a home where prayer was a part of daily life,” said McCarrick, who said she first received a “quiet sense of a call to follow God” when preparing for confirmation.

“Part of that preparation was for each of us to choose a patron, a saint, whom he or she might follow as a model,” she said. “Our teacher, Sister Leo Marie, had many resources available for our research. I was taken up with the story of Francis of Assisi, especially the way he lived with the lepers and ministered to them. I felt an attraction to that ideal, though I had never met a Franciscan.

“During high school, the Sisters of Mercy took us students to Albion to work with them at a day care center for the children of migrant workers. That experience touched me and gave a shape to my desire to serve, as it did for many of my generation in Niagara Falls.”

Serving people on the margins of society is “something for which I have good energy,” McCarrick said.

The energetic nun entered the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity at Stella Niagara shortly after her 1966 graduation from Niagara County’s Madonna High School.

Religious life, McCarrick observes, “is a good, simple life, lived across centuries and continents, by men and women. It’s been a strong part of the Roman Catholic faith since the sixth century and also exists in the Greek Orthodox, Episcopalian, Buddhist and Hindu traditions.”

In addition to her English degree from Daemen College in Snyder, where she was student editor of the campus newspaper, Ascent, McCarrick holds a master of social work degree and post-graduate certification in family therapy from the University of Rochester and has another a graduate degree from the Franciscan In-

stitute at St. Bonaventure University.

A licensed clinical social worker, she has also taught English at the Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart and performed community work with poor Spanish-speaking farmers. McCarrick has also worked for Catholic Charities in Buffalo’s Perry Projects and the First Ward of Lackawanna, and was executive director of Benedict House in Buffalo, an AIDS patient residence.

McCarrick also has served on the Governor’s Commission for AIDS Housing, the Western New York AIDS Coalition, and the Peace and Justice Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo. And then there is her work on boards of directors for the Cephas program for prisoners and former offenders; Daemen College and Stella Niagara Education Park. She currently serves on the board of directors of Catholic Charities of Western New York.

Besides her efforts at Heart, Love and Soul, this committed Franciscan finds time to direct an after-school reading program that she created. The Health Association of Niagara program is for second-and third-grade students who can’t read at their grade level.

For the Franciscan movement, she has served as the chairwoman of the research committee of the federation of 70-plus Franciscan congregations in the U. S. After serving two terms as the head of the Stella Niagara Franciscans, or provincial minister, she worked as a consultant with Franciscan congregations in four states and international Franciscan groups in four foreign countries.

She taught at retreats and facilitated meetings of the Franciscan “family” — both nationally and internationally — as well as instructing in the graduate program at St. Bonaventure. She was also a founding member of the Common Franciscan Novitiate and served as chairwoman of its board.

McCarrick said her values of Franciscan spirituality and service to the poor are a ministry “done out of a life of community and prayer.”

“I’ve lived in community with one other sister in an apartment over an empty storefront in Lackawanna,” she said, “and in community with 40 sisters at our motherhouse at Stella Niagara. Community affords a daily opportunity to pray together, and to support one another, and to receive support in practical, emotional and spiritual ways.

“It’s also possible to live in a community without walls. Sometimes religious don’t live together because of ministry, study or family needs, yet they remain closely connected, gathering together less frequently for prayer and support while using Internet or phone, between visits.”

“Like all religious men and women,” McCarrick said, her “life is grounded in prayer.”

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