Sister Margaret Marie Greenwell, 87, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph, died April 7, 2026, at Mount Saint Joseph, in her 71st year of religious life. She was a native of New Haven, Ky.
Sister Margaret Marie was kind, hospitable and encouraging to all those she met, and tried to see Christ in everyone.
She graduated from Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Maple Mount, Ky., in 1952. She graduated from Brescia College (now University), Owensboro, Ky., in 1969 and earned a master’s degree in education from Western Kentucky University in 1973.
All of her ministries were in Kentucky. She was an educator for 35 years, serving as a teacher at St. Brigid, Vine Grove (1957-59), St. Columba, Louisville (1959-61), St. Denis, Louisville (1961-67) and St. Thomas More, Paducah (1967-85), with her last two years there as principal. She was a parish minister at St. Ann Church in Morganfield (1985-86), before serving as principal at the school for one year and religion teacher for six (1986-93). From 1993 to 2015, she served the poor as the receptionist for the Sister Visitor Center in Louisville. After volunteering for a year, she retired to Maple Mount in 2016, where she remained active in prayer.
Survivors include the members of her religious community; her sister Janice Newton of Bardstown, Ky.; nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, Paul Hogarty and Margaret Marie Greenwell, her sister, Sister Paul Marie Greenwell, OSU, and her brother, Homer Greenwell.
The funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 14, at Mount Saint Joseph, where visitation begins Monday at 4 p.m., with a wake service following at 6:30 p.m.
Glenn Funeral Home and Crematory, Owensboro, is handling arrangements.
Donations in memory of Sister Margaret Marie may be made to the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, 8001 Cummings Road, Maple Mount, KY 42356.
Wake reflection
By Sister Sharon Sullivan
Congregational Leader
April 13, 2026
Within Give Us This Day’s Evening Prayer for Monday, April 6, we prayed Psalm 146 (verse 1 and 2) which began:
Alleluia!
My soul, give praise to the Lord;
I will praise the Lord all my life,
sing praise to my God while I live.
And for Sister Margaret Marie Greenwell – who once wrote, “During my. . . years of Religious Life, I have been richly blessed by God, my family, my friends, and (my) students. . . for this, I am eternally grateful.” – the words of the Psalm seem to summarize her life lived in daily praise of the God of her heart.
Just before noon, on Wednesday, August 31, 1938, Mary Helen Greenwell joined her sister, Rita Germaine, and her dad, Paul Hogarty, and her mama, Margaret Marie, as the second child in the young Greenwell family in New Haven, Kentucky. Eager to initiate their second daughter in their faith, tiny Mary Helen was baptized just four days later, on Saturday, September 3rd, at Saint Catherine Church in New Haven. Rita and Helen were soon joined by their brother Homer and their younger sister Janice, thus completing this New Haven family. And to Janice and Sister Margaret Marie’s nieces and nephews we Ursuline Sisters offer our prayers and condolences as you mourn your Aunt Helen’s passing and celebrate her life.
The Greenwell children grew up in New Haven in the middle of Kentucky’s Holy Land. Sister Margaret Marie would say of that time, “My prayer life came from my home life.” She remembered, “every evening we knelt around the bed and said the rosary, [Mama would] say, ‘If any of you did anything to each other today, ask forgiveness before we go to bed.’”
Childhood in the Holy Land also offered chances for joyful recreation; Helen and her siblings enjoyed spending time at the town’s skating rink and watching films at the movie theater. But most often they simply entertained each other.
Now, Helen turned six on August 31, 1944, and the next week began her association with the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, as she started first grade at Saint Catherine Grade School. She would have Ursuline educators throughout her school years, graduating from Grade School in 1952, and beginning her high school studies at Saint Catherine High School, where she encountered Sister DeChantal in her sophomore year.
That sophomore experience was a watershed year for Helen, for it was then that she decided to join the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. She would admit that she “had thoughts about entering in the 7th and 8th grades, but it became more serious when I entered High School. I was so impressed by the sisters. . .. I felt the Lord was calling me to do something special in my life.”
So, at the end of her sophomore year at Saint Catherine’s, Helen transferred to Mount Saint Joseph Academy so she could become a postulant. Following her older sister, Rita, who was now Sister Paul Marie, Helen would say, “my parents thought they were blessed to have two daughters entering the convent. My mother. . . was so happy for me.” On her application, the not-yet-sixteen-year-old Helen would write that she wished to become an Ursuline to “dedicate myself to God and to do His holy will.” And Sister Paul Marie told her to “do what the spirit was guiding (her) to do.”
She began her junior year and first year at Mount Saint Joseph Academy on the Tuesday after Labor Day in 1954; on that same day Helen also became a postulant with the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. One year later, not-yet-seventeen, on August 14, 1955, Mary Helen Greenwell took the name Sister Margaret Marie in honor of her mother and joined her fourteen other classmates – Sisters Joseph Amelia, Phyllis Anne, Louis Mary, Marie Michael, Claudette, Victor Louise, Francis Louise, Catherine Marie, Charolette Marie, Mary Sarita, Mary Faustina, Mary Anthony or Teresa, Mary Norbert, and Marietta. In Paola, Kansas, that same year, Sister Jane Falke was also beginning her journey. And to Sisters Catherine Marie, Francis Louise, and Jane we offer our love, our prayers, and our condolences as you celebrate the life of your classmate.
Less than two years later in 1957, Sister Margaret Marie would – all in the same year – graduate from Mount Saint Joseph Academy on May 27; make temporary vows on August 15; celebrate her 19th birthday on August 31; and three days later, begin teaching second grade at Saint Brigid School in Vine Grove, Kentucky. She had not yet even begun taking any classes at Brescia College.
Over the next ten years, Sister Margaret Marie would teach first and second grades at Saint Brigid School in Vine Grove and at Saint Columba and Saint Denis Schools in Louisville, while taking summer classes at Brescia College. It would be another year, the autumn of 1968, before she would earn her Baccalaureate in Elementary Education from Brescia, and five more to earn her master’s in education from Western Kentucky University. By then she was teaching in Paducah at Saint Mary Elementary at Saint Thomas More.
Sister Margaret Marie would teach in Paducah for eighteen (18) years, beginning with the primary grades and then moving into teaching religion to all grades. Teaching about her faith and the Church was so fulfilling for Sister Margaret Marie. In her Annals for the Archives during those years, she would simply indicate that she taught religion to the classes with lay teachers – which by then were the vast majority of the school’s classes. But in the section for “special events during the year,” she would carefully list every one of the sacramental celebrations her students had experienced. Naming each of the parishes in which they made first communion or received confirmation, noting that they had received sacramental preparation from “Sister Margaret Marie.” In these careful records you could sense the awe she felt at being responsible for so many students’ experiences of and growth in their faith.
She would reflect:
“When you talk to Kindergarten (children) about your faith life, they just love it. I loved teaching religion to all grades, even the 8th graders.”
“In Paducah, one of her young students, Bud, was ‘very taken with her story of how God was everywhere with us. He went home and told his mother, “Did you know?? God is in our kitchen!”’”
In May of 1982, in her fifteenth year at Saint Mary Elementary, the town itself recognized the gift of Sister Margaret Marie’s optimistic and hopeful spirit, a spirit she shared with her students and families in and beyond the classroom. With appropriate fanfare and formal documentation, the Mayor of Paducah bestowed on Sister Margaret Marie the official title of “Duchess of Paducah,” in grateful recognition of her service to the children and families of Paducah. And so she became the only Duchess at Mount Saint Joseph.
By 1985, Sister Margaret Marie responded to a call and request to minister in parish work at Saint Ann Parish in Morganfield. After just one year in parish ministry, she and her co-worker, Sister Clara Johnson, were asked to fill suddenly opened positions at the parish’s school. Sister Margaret Marie continued at Saint Ann School for seven more years.
Sister Margaret Marie had been an educator for thirty-five (35) years when she heard a voice from the Holy Spirit; she would write, “I loved every year of my teaching, but you know when it is time to move on.” So she told her friend, Sister Clara, that she thought it was time to do something new; and Sisters Margaret Marie and Clara packed their bags and moved to Louisville to begin working at Sister Visitor Center in direct service to persons in need.
For the next twenty-two (22) years, Sister Margaret Marie would serve as receptionist for Sister Visitor Center. As receptionist, hers would be first voice that callers heard or the first welcoming face that visitors or people seeking help would see. Sister Margaret Marie was so proud of Sister Visitor Center and the work and services it provided. In her years of service there she worked to strengthen her own skills; she participated in workshops and classes focusing on children and families at risk; she attended USA-Catholic Charities conferences and workshops with regularity.
In the Sister Visitor Center newsletter, Sister Margaret Marie wrote several “Volunteer Spotlight” articles highlighting volunteers who supported the Center’s direct service work. The articles extolled the volunteers’ spirits of generosity and hope. Sister Margaret Marie would say of herself, “It’s not the money we make, it’s the service we give. . . I receive more in my heart than anything we could ever give them,” reflecting Saint Angela’s words that we often have “more need to serve them than they have to be served by (us).” At the end of her twenty-two years, Sister Margaret Marie would say of her time, “My work at Sister Visitor Center is a beautiful blessing for me.”
Two thousand five (2005) was the year of Sister Margaret Marie’s 50th Jubilee; it was for her a banner year. She wrote in her Annals that her Golden Jubilee was filled with celebration after celebration, noting that “I have been blessed during these fifty (50) years with a wonderful family, vocation, friends (and) MSJ community. God is good!” Yet she continued, “While this year is a celebrating one, there is another part of it that is not as celebrating. Clara’s illness has really tested our faith. God is taking care of Clara and I do feel God has her in His loving embrace.”
The next nine years saw Clara’s health continue to decline; Sister Margaret Marie continued her years at Sister Visitor Center while struggling to support her dear friend until she passed away in 2014. Sister Margaret Marie would say, “God is calling me to continue my work at Sister Visitor Center, which I dearly love.” But by the end of 2015, she knew it was time for her to come home to Mount Saint Joseph.
Sister Margaret Marie retired to the Villa in 2016 and served loyally in the Powerhouse of Prayer. And for the nurses and staff of the Villa who cared for Sister Margaret Marie with such love, we Ursulines also offer our prayers and our thanks as you join with us to celebrate her life.
Sister Margaret Marie modeled her faith in the promise she found in Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians (1:6, 9, 11) – “(For God) who began the good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. . . that your love may abound more and more . . . to the glory and praise of God.”
And just after midnight, as Tuesday, April 7th began, Sister Margaret Marie stepped into Jesus’ embrace, surely rejoining her sister, Sister Paul Marie, and her dear friend, Sister Clara, in the eternal celebration of God’s love and glory.
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