Sister Patricia Woll, I.H.M., (formerly known as Sister M. Aniceta) of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, died on Dec. 28 in Scranton. She was 82.
She made her final profession of vows on Aug. 2, 1956.
Locally, she taught at St. Ephrem, Dyker Heights, 1968-71 and 1984-94.
She also served as assistant to the director of the I.H.M. Art Studio in Scranton, Pa., from 1996 to 1999. She was an artist and created art for I.H.M. Congregation publications as well as arts and crafts for the I.H.M. Heartworks Boutique at Our Lady of Peace Residence.
Burial was at St. Catherine’s Cemetery in Moscow, Pa.
Sister Dolores Vitale, M.P.F., a member of the Religious Teachers Filippini, Morristown, N.J., for 64 years, died Thursday, Dec. 19, at St. Joseph Hall Infirmary, Morristown. She was 85.
Born in Cleveland, she made her religious profession on Aug. 17, 1953.
She taught the first grade for more than 30 years in elementary schools in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut and New York. Locally, she taught first grade at St. Bernadette School, Dyker Heights, 1967-71.
Burial was in the Sisters’ Ave Maria Cemetery, Morristown.
Fernando (Freddy) Marano, father of Father Fred Marano, former rector of Cathedral Prep and Seminary, Elmhurst, and currently a parochial vicar at Holy Family, Flushing, died Dec. 22 at the age of 93.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated Dec. 28 at Our Lady of the Snows Church, North Floral Park.
Father Donald G. Devine, S.J., a native of Brooklyn, died Dec. 26 at Murray-Weigel Hall, the Bronx. He was 80, a member of the Jesuits for 61 years and a priest for 48 years.
After attending Xavier H.S., Manhattan, he entered novitiate at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
From 1959 to 1962, he taught Latin, English and Religion at Brooklyn Prep. In preparation for ordination, he studied theology at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Md., 1962-68, and was ordained a priest on June 10, 1965 at the Fordham University Church.
He then began many years of teaching and administration. Locally, he taught at Xavier H.S. and was chaplain there from 1973 to 1979.
In 2009, he became faculty chaplain at Fordham Prep, an assignment he carried out until his illness and death.
Burial was at the Jesuit Cemetery, Auriesville, N.Y.
He is survived by his sister, Carol Keyes of Tarpon Springs, Fla., and his brother, Glen of Spring Hill, Fla.
Sister Ruth Phillips, S.S.N.D., who taught in Catholic schools in five different states over nearly 40 years, died Dec. 28 at Lourdes Health Care Center in Wilton, Conn.
She was 82 and had been a professed member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame for 55 years.
She was employed at Vogue Dolls Inc. for five years before entering the School Sisters of Notre Dame.
Her only assignment in the Brooklyn Diocese was at St. Matthias in Ridgewood, 1965-70.
Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent, the co-founder of the controversial New Ways Ministry and active for 29 years in ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics, died Jan. 1 of complications from cancer. He was 76.
Father Nugent had been diagnosed with lung cancer in September. He had been in hospice care in Milwaukee, where the Salvatorians have provincial headquarters.
New Ways Ministry was under repeated investigations and inquiries at the diocesan, religious-order and Vatican levels, including one ordered in 1994 by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1994, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI.
As a result, he was ordered to stop the ministry, because it advanced “doctrinally unacceptable” positions.
Barbara Ann Wisdom, 71, a midwife and former member of the Sisters of Charity, Halifax, for 27 years, was struck by a car and died in South Carolina on Dec. 30.
Born in Bay Ridge, she attended Our Lady of Angels School and St. John’s Villa Academy, Staten Island. She entered the order in 1961.
Locally, she taught at St. Sebastian School, Woodside.
In 1983, she graduated as a nurse and midwife from SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Crown Heights. She worked for six years in the Mothers, Infants and Children Program at Brookdale Medical Center in Brownsville.
She also participated in medical mission trips to the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.
A parishioner of Sacred Heart, Bayside, she worked as a midwife in a private practice in Forest Hills until her retirement in 2012. The following year, she relocated to Summerville, S.C.
She is survived by two brothers, Charles of Nevada and Thomas of California, and one sister, Carolyn Sobering of New Jersey.
A memorial Mass will be celebrated at Sacred Heart, Bayside, Jan. 25, at 11 a.m., followed by a luncheon in the parish hall.