By Susan Gallagher

Sister Marie M. Mollis had been to Butte only a couple of times before she pulled up stakes in Colorado last year, retired to the Mining City and became a volunteer at its Catholic hospital, St. James Healthcare.

Seven months into the relocation, Sister Marie of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth has settled into Butte and into St. James, where she shares her gifts and her time in many ways.

She is among the people who make it possible for patients to receive the Eucharist. She celebrates new life by visiting new moms and dads, and when a St. James patient dies, it often is Sister Marie who writes a message of sympathy to the family, on behalf of the hospital. Five mornings a week she staffs the information desk, greeting people as they arrive and helping them find their way. On top of that, she’s seen kitchen duty, wrapping cutlery and napkins for patients’ meal trays.

“When people walk in the front door you want to show love,” and Sister Marie radiates it, Donna Ellis, one of about 75 volunteers at St. James, told The Montana Catholic.

Sister Marie helps to sustain the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth presence at St. James, which the sisters opened in 1881 to care for Butte copper miners. Today, the hospital is one of nine in the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System, a corporation that dates to 1972 and includes four clinics. At St. James, Sister Marie has succeeded Sister Ann Winifred McGarry, who retired to the religious order’s Mother House in Leavenworth, Kan. With her departure, just one member of the order was at the Butte hospital. She is Sister Mary Agnes Hogan, its director of mission.

Sister Marie moved to Butte last August after 14 years of parish ministry in Colorado, first in Denver and then in Platteville, a riverside crossroads where she served a parish without a resident priest. She also tutored at Denver’s Mount St. Vincent Home, which serves children experiencing emotional and behavioral problems. Sister Marie’s parish ministry and work at the children’s home followed many years as a teacher. She retired from the classroom in 1992 after work in Chicago, Billings and Denver, and in Kansas City, Mo.

She said part of Butte’s appeal is that the people are a lot like those in Platteville—“so real, so fun, so friendly.” She enjoys knitting, needlework, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, cryptograms and—just the thing in southwestern Montana—hiking.

“When I heard that Sister Ann Winifred was retiring, it (Butte) seemed like a perfect fit,” Sister Marie said.

She graduated from St. Mary’s High School in Cheyenne, Wyo., and then studied in Leavenworth at the University of St. Mary, which is sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth.

“The sisters who taught at the college were fabulous and so much fun,” Sister Marie said. “They impressed me so much that I felt called to be one.”

She went on to a life of service that fellow volunteer Ellis finds magnified by Sister Marie’s exceptional ability to connect with people.

“She will cry with you, she will laugh with you—she has a sense of humor that is beyond fun,” Ellis said. “She has a servant’s heart.”


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 4, April 16, 2010.