Missionary nun was principal of Maryknoll
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Maryknoll Sister Anne Marie Callahan, former principal of Maryknoll High School, Honolulu, died July 30 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Maryknoll, New York. She was 85 and a Maryknoll Sister for 65 years.
Hawaii, where she was sent in 1967, was her first “mission” assignment. She recalled the move in a 2019 interview in the Lowell Sun newspaper.
“Most people in those days wanted to be assigned to an overseas place, like Africa or South America, or someplace beyond the borders of the United States,” she said. “But I did feel very fortunate to be assigned there, and I had a very good 10 years there.”
She said her most rewarding part of being a Maryknoll Sister was “getting to know people from other cultures, and some cases, being able to help people.”
Sister Callahan was born July 4, 1935, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Helen (Monahan) Callahan and Leo Callahan.
She entered the Maryknoll Sisters novitiate in Maryknoll, New York, in 1955. She made her first profession of vows at the Maryknoll Sisters Center on June 24, 1958, and her final profession on June 24, 1964.
Sister Callahan earned a bachelor of education degree in 1960 at Maryknoll Teachers College and a master’s degree in mathematics in 1962 from Fordham University. During this time she also taught at Mary Rogers College until 1967 when she was assigned a teaching spot at Maryknoll High School.
There she also served as chairman of the math department from 1971 to 1973 and principal from 1974 to 1977. She returned to Maryknoll, New York, in 1977 to serve as congregational treasurer until 1984.
In 1986, she was assigned as a pastoral worker in a refugee camp in Campeche, Mexico. In 1991, she relocated to the Mesquital section of Guatemala City to work with a pastoral team in a new parish, serving hundreds of Guatemalan families who had settled on undeveloped land.
Sister Anne returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in 2001 to serve again as congregational treasurer, followed by an assignment as coordinator of the Maryknoll Sisters retreat/vacation house in Rhode Island.
In 2007, she moved to Baltimore, volunteering as a member on the housing advocacy committee of two parishes, as a hospital eucharistic minister and as a member of the Maryknoll Sisters regional finance committee.
Sister Callahan retired in 2015 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center.
In her 2019 interview she was asked if there was any place she would like to return to. She answered, “Hawaii, just to see it again.”