By Margaret Gaughan

When Elizabeth Carr accepted the job as Catholic campus minister at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., she never imagined the job would lead her to an alumna who would change her life. Mary Josephine (Mollie) Rogers was a 1905 Smith College graduate who became Mother Mary Joseph, founder of the Maryknoll Sisters. Her portrait was gracing Carr's office when she arrived for work at the women's liberal arts college in 1988. But the smiling, welcoming Sister in the photograph who died in 1955 would become more than a historical figure to the new campus minister. "Entering into her spirit and becoming friends with the Maryknoll Sisters during my 22 years at Smith have been among the greatest gifts of my life," says Carr, now a theology professor and counselor in southern California.

Getting to know Mollie Rogers and her religious congregation began for Carr soon after she came to Smith. The late Bishop Leo O'Neil of Springfield, Mass., a former Maryknoll seminarian, asked her to establish a Mollie Rogers award to be given annually to a "Smithie" who exhibited Rogers' gift for fostering understanding among people of different cultures. "I called the Maryknoll Sisters and invited then-president Sister Claudette LaVerdiere to come to Smith to speak about Maryknoll," recalls Carr, adding that after meeting LaVerdiere and the four Sisters she brought with her, she was eager to learn more about them and their founder. 

"I discovered Mollie was from a family of pioneers," says Carr. "Her grandfather, who came from Ireland, was the first Catholic elected official in Boston." His granddaughter was one of only a few Catholic students at largely Protestant Smith College when she became a student there in 1901.

Already a mother figure to her seven siblings in Jamaica Plain, Mollie, the oldest daughter of Abraham Rogers and Mary Josephine Plummer, brought her natural leadership to Smith College, where she majored in botany and zoology and participated in extracurricular activities such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians and chapel choir.

"Even as an undergraduate, Mollie had an interest in mission," says Carr, pointing to college records that note Rogers as the leader of a discussion group on Catholic home and foreign missions during her junior year. But, says Carr, the future founder traces her call to overseas mission to the day she was walking across the campus in 1904 and heard the strains of the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" being sung by joyous Protestant students who had just signed pledges to serve as missioners in China.

"Mollie later recalled how she went across the street to St. Mary's Church, where the Catholic students worshiped," says Carr. "She knelt before the tabernacle and asked God to show her how she could serve her Church."

A year after her graduation, when she joined Smith's zoology faculty, she began her first mission endeavor. At the encouragement of Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, a professor of American literature, she agreed to offer classes on Catholic mission to Catholic students. And the spark of her lifelong mission work was ignited when, on the advice of the priest at St. Mary's, she sought information for her mission classes from Father James A. Walsh, director of Boston's mission office  who would co-found the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in 1911. She began aiding him in the publication of his mission magazine, The Field Afar, then joined the small group of women assisting his fledgling mission society and eventually led the group into becoming a missionary congregation in their own right, the first such U.S. religious order for women.

"To me, Mollie Rogers was another Teresa of Avila, reaching into the wisdom of the Church's tradition to do something new for women," says Carr. "Mollie's deep love of all God's creation and her solidarity with all who suffer are the foundation on which the Maryknoll Sisters build."

Carr's research has taken her many times to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York, where she has brought scores of Smith students, like Nichole Flores and Tanya Skypeck, to imbibe Mollie's spirit.

"Looking at Mollie's life, I see she had a great sense of justice cultivated through prayer," says Flores, a 2004 Smith graduate who pursued post-graduate studies in theology there. "Like Mollie, I need to find quiet in the midst of noise to be present to God, not just for self-care. Mollie was aware of the challenges of her time. How am I available to others?"

"I look at the image of Mollie in her habit, laughing, joyful," says Skypeck, a 2002 Smith graduate. "I want to be a good woman too. I want my life to speak of God's love, the way Mollie's did."

"Mollie was a real mother. Our students feel that when they look at her picture and meet the Maryknoll Sisters," Carr says. She has experienced that gift often, she says, and recalls a time when the Maryknoll Sisters invited her to give a talk on their founder. "I was very nervous," Carr admits. "So I prayed to Mollie." The image came to her of the Maryknoll Sisters' founder telling her from heaven, "Don't worry. We're celebrating, and we made strawberry shortcake for you."

"Mollie loved ice cream and strawberry shortcake," Carr says, "and she was known to make sure the Sisters got some when they returned from mission. It was part of her tender loving care."  When Carr went to the dining room to eat lunch before her talk, she had no fear. There was strawberry shortcake for dessert!

For more information about the Maryknoll Sisters visit www.maryknollsisters.org