School Sister of St. Francis Marionita Gergen served in the archdiocese 37 years

Sister Marionita Gergen, who spent 79 of her 100 years of life as a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis, including 37 years in the Archdiocese of Omaha, died Aug. 17 in Milwaukee.

A funeral Mass was offered there Aug. 21. She was buried in her hometown of Schickley, in southeast Nebraska.

Sister Marionita served in the archdiocese as a teacher and principal at Archbishop Bergan Catholic High School in Fremont from 1962 to 1966, and as aspirant director for her congregation’s Our Lady of the Angels provincial house in Omaha from 1966 to 1967.

She also taught at the former Archbishop Ryan High School in Omaha from 1966 to 1983 and served as a parish minister at St. Stanislaus Parish, also in Omaha, from 1983 to 1999.

Before coming to the archdiocese, she was an educator in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Sister Marionita was born in 1920 in the southeast Nebraska town of Schickley and was received into the School Sisters of St. Francis in 1941. She made her first profession of vows in 1943 and final vows in 1949.

In her retirement, Sister Marionita was a volunteer at St. Joseph Convent in Campbellsport, Wisconsin, and later served in the ministry of prayer and presence at Sacred Heart Convent in Milwaukee.

Survivors include a sister, Florence Dondlinger of Fairmont, Nebraska, many nieces and nephews and the School Sisters of St. Francis community.