ACADEMIC NEWS
“ONE
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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: SR. MARY FINN, HVM
The year is 1934, and Mary Finn comes into the
world. What was your family situation like?
My sweet mother, Mary O’Hara, was Chica-
go-Irish. My Dad was raised Catholic in the
farm country of Northern Ireland. Daddy
was a Detroit streetcar motorman on the
Gratiot line in the 1930s through the ’50s.
Grandpa O’Hara almost every day during
our pre-school years bundled the three little
Finn girls, Pat, Marge, and me, into a red
wagon to visit our Glenfield-Gratiot neigh-
borhood on the east side of Detroit. Every
storekeeper and front porch family and
beer garden patron met and loved Grandpa
and the Finn sisters.
So you grew up in a Catholic environment?
Our neighborhood was a 1940s mix of many
ethnic and religious cultures. We loved every
aspect of neighborhood life at St. David Par-
ish: the priests and Sisters of St. Joseph, daily
liturgy, crushes on altar boys at Thursday
26
night holy hours, sleeping through family ro-
sary, sodality dances, and teaching catechism. influence,” so to speak, of Father Schoen-
herr, I was receiving my vocation.
I’ve read that you were a pretty good athlete. What is the charism of the Home Visitors of
Mary? Why did you feel moved to enter the
community?
In seventh grade, newly-ordained Father
Schoenherr [later Bishop] invited me to
play and coach the CYO parish girls bas-
ketball and fast pitch softball team. If there
had been honors for girl players and coach-
es in those days, I would have received the
best! My batting average in four years of
high school was 800! That was reported in
the Detroit Times in the spring of 1952.
When did you first feel a call to a religious
vocation?
In eighth grade, in 1948, Father Schoenherr
gave a retreat on the three encyclicals of
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, Divino Afflan-
te Spiritu, and Mediator Dei. They became
the three guiding stars of my young faith
and undeveloped vocation. “Under the
Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Spring 2017
The Home Visitors of Mary was founded
on November 21, 1949, at an abandoned
North End St. George Parish, by Cardinal
Edward Mooney and Msgr. John Ryan,
who was on the faculty of Sacred Heart
Seminary, and lay women ministers, Mary
Schutz and Mary Agnes McInnis. We were
founded as an urban sisterhood to visit and
welcome Black families moving into white
Catholic parishes.
When I was in tenth grade, Sister Mary
and Sister May Agnes gave a vocation talk
at St. David High School. Without telling
anyone, I knew then: “That is who I will be
. . . a Home Visitor . . . in the body of Christ
in the city.”
A LW AY S