Helen Marie McCarty was born on July 17, 1921, the third of eight children born to Ignatius Paul McCarty and Nettie Rose Mahoney McCarty in Daviess County, Ky. Her siblings included William Anthony, Paul Ignatius, James Michael, Celestine Joseph, Francis Xavier, Elizabeth Jane and Rose Mary. She was baptized one week after she was born, on July 24, 1921, in St. Elizabeth Church in Curdsville, Ky., and 12 years later she was confirmed in the same church.
She attended elementary school at St. Elizabeth in Curdsville. For secondary school, she went to Mercy Academy in Louisville, Ky., for two years and then as a day student at Mount Saint Joseph Academy for her final two years of high school.
Helen Marie entered religious life on February 1, 1941. She was received into the Novitiate on August 14, 1941, being given the name of Sister Mary Pauletta (which was a combination of her father’s name, Paul, and her mother’s name Nettie.) She made her First Profession of Vows on August 15, 1943, and was immediately sent to teach at St. Catherine’s School in New Haven, Ky. She professed her Final Vows on August 15, 1946.
Sister Pauletta taught several different age groups from 1st to 8th grades. Her favorite class to teach was the 6th grade. She was a teacher and principal at different schools for 36 years and had 16 different assignments in Kentucky, Missouri, and Nebraska. She wrote: “It’s a happy thought to think about how many lives have touched mine.”
After retiring from teaching, she worked in parish ministry. Later she was Assistant Local Superior and Director of Transportation at the Mount for five years. She provided pastoral and personal care to the Sisters at the Mount and was the Sacristan. After retiring from these ministries, she kept the daily annals for the Motherhouse for five years.
When she was 84 years old, she described her ministry as “taking the senior Sisters to the nutrition site in Curdsville every week.” They played cards and made quilts with the senior citizens in the area because Sister Pauletta thought it was important for the Sisters to mingle. Sister Pauletta also took roses to the Sisters in the Villa.
In an interview in November of 2012, Sister Pauletta said she feels blessed to be an Ursuline Sister. “It was the best thing for me,” she said. “I feel grateful to the Lord. You knit me together in my mother’s womb; You know all my faults and failures, yet you still love me.”
Sister Pauletta, 96, died Saturday, April 7, 2018, at Mount St. Joseph in her 77th year of religious life. The funeral Mass was at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 10, 2018, with Father Josh McCarty, her great nephew, as presider and homilist.