The following story first appeared in the Autumn 2006 Glenmary Challenge.
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Remarkable Generosity of Spirit
Marie Knowles: Army nurse, Papal Volunteer to Latin America, home mission supporter.
By Margaret Gabriel

MARIE KNOWLES: Mission partner since 1949.

As a member of the Navy Nurse Corps before and during World War II, Marie Knowles visited many places around the world. But she eagerly tells a story about an experience in Mission Land, USA, that made a lasting impression on her.

While traveling in East Tennessee after World War II, Marie, a native of Boston, fell ill and wasn’t able to find a hotel in that isolated area. The folks who owned the restaurant where she stopped for information let her spend the night in a room above their restaurant. A good night’s rest did wonders for her, she recalls.

“The next day was Sunday,” Marie says. “When I asked where I could find a Catholic Church, they looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language!” Driving west for over three hours, she finally came to the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville. The church was crowded and she was unable to find a seat.

“One of the ushers took one look at me and offered me a chair and a glass of water!” Thus Marie had her first experience with southern hospitality.

Several years later, still with the Navy, Marie was in California when she found some literature about Glenmary in a clinic where she was working. “I read it and realized that they were talking about the ‘no-church land’ of the South,” a place like she had encountered in East Tennessee.

“I realized these people needed help! I thought the no-church situation was terrible,” Marie says. “In Boston, there’s a church on every corner and in the South you have to drive for miles and miles to find a Catholic church. I thought the people were very deprived.”

After making her first gift to Glenmary in 1949, Marie received a hand-written note from Glenmary’s founder, Father William Howard Bishop, who also asked her if he could be her spiritual advisor, an offer Marie declined. “I think he wanted me to be a Glenmary Sister,” she says, “and I was too old for that life!” Although she did not feel the call to be a Glenmary Sister, Marie continued her financial support of Glenmary’s home mission ministry—and answered her personal call to mission service in other ways.

In 1962 Pope John XXIII formed the Papal Volunteers to train people to serve in Latin America. Marie read about the volunteers in The Pilot, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, and called for information. “I was a nurse, and I knew I could help,” she says. So, at the age of 52, she left the Navy and became a missionary.

Assigned to Peru, Marie worked for three years (1962-65) with another nurse and two Sisters of the Holy Angels from Lennoxville, Quebec. They lived in a tin house and set up a clinic in an area that had no hospitals and no other clinics.

“Peru was poor and the people were uneducated,” Marie recalls. “They never had a priest and many were not married in the Church, but they knew God and still loved the Church. I loved the work, and I loved the people. They were very kind and generous.”

Her experiences in the rural areas of Peru, as well as her travels in “No Priest Land” in the southern United States, kept Marie interested in Glenmary’s ministry of bringing the Church to areas of the United States with few Catholics, many unchurched people and a large number of people living in poverty.

Marie, now 95 and living in Framingham, Mass., has been supporting Glenmary for over 56 years, making her one of Glenmary’s longest-standing donors. Besides her regular annual giving, she is a charter member of the Father Bishop Legacy Society for planned givers because she long ago decided to remember Glenmary in her will.

“Her generosity of spirit is remarkable,” says Susan Lambert, Glenmary’s planned giving officer, who visited Marie in her home last year. “Throughout her life,” Susan says, “Marie has combined action and resources to make a difference in the world around her.”

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