Obituary | Sr. John Michael Ritchie, SL
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A funeral Mass was celebrated May 14 for Loretto Sister John Michael Ritchie, a longtime teacher of first-graders in Missouri, Illinois, Texas and Colorado. The Mass was in the Church of the Seven Dolors on the grounds of the Loretto Motherhouse in Nerinx, Ky.
Sister John Michael, 90, died May 8 at the Loretto Motherhouse Infirmary after several weeks of declining health. She had been a Sister of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross for 71 years.
Born Clarice Ritchie in Bardstown, Ky., she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross in 1940 and received her habit and her religious name in 1941. She made her first vows in1943 and her final vows in 1947. She received a bachelor's degree in elementary education, with minors in social studies, philosophy and English, in 1953 from Webster College (now University).
In the St. Louis Archdiocese, Sister John Michael served at St. Rose School in St. Louis, 1943; St. Ann in Normandy, 1943-44 and 1950-57; St. Michael in Shrewsbury, 1944-46; Sacred Heart in St. Louis, 1957-61; St. Paul the Apostle in Pine Lawn, 1961-65; and Mary Queen of Peace in Webster Groves, 1965-76. She also tutored at the Loretto Learning Center in Webster Groves from 1987-88.
Sister John Michael served as sacristan at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver from 1988-92. She retired to the Loretto Motherhouse in Nerinx in 1992 and moved to the infirmary in 2002, where she resided until her death. Burial was in the Loretto Motherhouse Cemetery in Nerinx, Ky.
