ALUMNI PROFILE

True Calling

Sister Antonia Maria Guerrieri, MM, M.D., was one of three women to graduate from Marquette Medical School in 1934. Then she answered her true calling.

By Joni moths mueller

There was no doubt in her mind that she was destined to be a Maryknoll Sister. And while it was her parents who insisted their eight children earn college degrees before embarking on any life work, it was the Maryknoll Sisters who saw Sister Antonia’s aptitude for science and asked her to stay in school a little longer to study medicine.

After graduating, she entered the convent, professed vows, and soon began living abroad, staffing clinics for the poor in South China, Korea and Taiwan. She returned home in the mid-1990s.

Sister Antonia still visits bedridden patients — to chat, not to take their vitals. “I try to help take their minds off of the ceiling for just a few minutes,” she says.