A funeral Mass for Sister Sheila Prendeville will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 27, in St. Joseph Chapel of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood, 204 N. Main St. in O’Fallon. A wake will precede the Mass at 10 a.m.
Sister Sheila, 72, died Jan. 8.
Born in St. Louis, she entered the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood community in 1963 just months after graduating from Bishop DuBourg High School. When she became a novice, she was given the name Sister John Marie.
Sister Sheila received a bachelor’s degree from Fontbonne College in 1968, with a major in philosophy and a minor in history and theology. She received a master’s degree in education/counseling from St. Louis University in 1972 and a master’s in religious studies from Mundelein College in Chicago in 1985.
Sister Sheila taught at St. Sabina School in Florissant, then at St. Elizabeth Academy in south St. Louis. Next, she worked with the elderly at St. Pius V Parish in south St. Louis. Later, she worked at the Cass Catholic Worker House, then as pastoral minister at Mary Queen and Mother in Shrewsbury.
In 1982, she began a 28-year service as a hospital chaplain at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, Ill. In 2012, she returned to O’Fallon for a ministry of prayer and presence.
Survivors include a sister, Mary Prendeville.
