Celebrating Sr. Rosemary Gaffney's 75th Jubilee
Sisters and staff celebrated Sr. Rosemary Gaffney’s 75th Jubilee on Tuesday with a special Mass and luncheon at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Convent in Sound Beach, NY.
Did you know…
Sr. Rosemary’s loving family gave to the Montfort family, 2 Daughters of Wisdom and a Montfort Father.
Born to deaf parents, she was fluent in sign language and went on to be multilingual. Two weeks after her profession, at age 19, she was sent as a missionary to Bogota, Columbia. She first served as a teacher and then as principal of the Daughters of Wisdom’s school, Nuestra Senora de la Sabiduria for deaf and blind girls. In later years, she served as a translator of French to English, Spanish to English, and French to Spanish of documents sent from the Daughters of Wisdom Generalate.
Sister has a doctorate in Speech and Hearing Sciences. She taught in the graduate program in Hunter College, New York, where she was the director of the deaf- education program for over twenty years.
She served as a translator of English to Spanish on HOPE SHIP, USA, in Cartagena, Colombia.
She was instrumental in the founding of two schools for the deaf in Bucaramanga and Florencia, Columbia.
She collaborated with the Ministry of Education in Bogota to start a University Program to prepare teachers of the Deaf for Colombia.
At their request, she prepared the Peace Corps members to work in Colombian Schools for the Deaf.
At the request of Brother Frank Sassone, she spent three weeks in Peru giving conferences on Deaf Education at the Catholic University.
She collaborated with her brother, Father Patrick Gaffney, SMM, on the translation and publication of Father de Montfort’s 164 Hymns: God Alone II.
She uses the universal sign for “I Love You” with genuine enthusiasm.
