Retired Mercy Sisters Leaving Aurora by November
Bishop Emeritus Thomas G. Doran offers Communion to a retired sister resident of McAuley Manor at a Mass in 2000. The remaining retired sisters are to move by November to another facility in Chicago. (Observer file photo by Amanda Hudson)
The late Sister James Marie O’Connor, SSND, talks with a retired sister at a gathering at McAuley Manor in Aurora in 2000. The facility will end nearly 30 years of housing retired Sisters of Mercy in November. Sister James Marie was Vicaress for Women Religious for the Diocese of Rockford for many years. (Observer file photo by Amanda Hudson)
By Amanda Hudson, News Editor
August 15, 2014

NOTE: This article was re-written to reflect this updated information: McAuley Manor Nursing Home will remain open.

AURORA--McAuley Manor and convent was dedicated on Dec. 8, 1985.

Nearly 30 years later the community is saying goodbye to the last of Mercy Sisters who have resided there.

The 88-bed Manor nursing home was built primarily to service retired members of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas religious order, although it also has over the years served other religious orders as well as the public. That will continue as a nursing home under Presence Health, which owns the entire building. Plans for McAuley convent are yet to be announced.

The convent, a 32-bedroom facility, was built adjacent to the nursing home to "provide support services for retired Sisters of Mercy who do not need nursing care," said Mercy Sister Brenda Finnegan, first administrator of the facility as quoted in an article in the Dec. 13, 1985 Observer.

Now the remaining Mercy sisters housed at the facility are preparing to move to Mercy Circle in Chicago, adjacent to Xavier University and Mother McAuley High School, both founded by the Sisters of Mercy. Mercy Circle is a continuing care retirement community that was completed in 2013. The services it provides range from independent and assisted living apartments to skilled nursing and memory care units.

The eight sisters still residing at McAuley will join more than 60 other Mercy sisters at Mercy Circle, including 13 McAuley residents who chose to move there this past March and May, says Sandy Goetzinger, director of communications at the Sisters of Mercy West Midwest Community central office in Nebraska.

Sister Margaret Mary Hinz and Sister Judith Frikker visited with the eight sisters in July about joining the others at Mercy Circle.

“We sisters entered religious life to live in community,” Sister Hinz says. “The move to Mercy Circle will afford them the opportunity to be part of a vibrant community of nearly 70 Sisters of Mercy … We left it up to them as to when the move would take place, as long as it is before winter.”

The decision, she adds, was a painful one. “The sisters knew it was time to move,” she says. “We prayed with them about it and recalled the sacrifices of the early sisters who came from Ireland to start foundations in the United States.”

The consolidation of the retired sisters is reflective of modern times. In 2008, six Mercy regional communities came together to form the West Midwest Community. The same religious-order, come-together approach is found also in the creation first of Provena Health – which combined the health care efforts of three religious communities including the Sisters of Mercy – and now of Presence Health, with its sponsorship of five religious communities.

The Mercy sisters who work at Presence Health and in the area will remain in Aurora, including Sister Judith Niemet, administrator at Presence McAuley Manor who "has a role at Presence Health," Goetzinger says. Plans are for the eight sisters to move later this fall, before winter sets in.