Word reached the Chancellor’s Office of the passing of Sister Rose Christina Momm (Eleanor Momm), SNJM, on May 16, 2024, at Teresian House in Albany, NY, after more than 7 decades of service as a Sister of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.  Sister Rose Christina celebrated 88 years of life and 69 years of her religious profession.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 attended 15 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.”

She 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.

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, insistant 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.

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 Calvary Cemetery in Glenmont, New York.

Complete obituary at this link.

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May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed
by the mercy of God rest in peace!