NCR celebrates a Sister of Charity of NY

“Sister’s legacy includes 43 years of mission medical care” writes the NCR.

“Heaven has gained another saint, right up there with Mother Teresa of Calcutta.”
– Father Mike Savelesky

Large crowds of native people, two funeral Masses, continuous rosaries, and a two-mile procession to the Santa Lucia cemetery give strong testimony to the words of Father Mike Savelesky, the Spokane Diocese’s Moderator of the Curia, that Guatemala has produced another saint. Sister Immaculata Burke, a Sister of Charity of New York (SCNY), provided the Mayan Indians of the Spokane mission area with medical care for 43 years. Sister Immaculata passed on to her heavenly reward on Saturday, March 8.

Sister Immaculata took on the assignment of bringing health care to the Quiché-speaking natives of the Spokane mission in 1971, after earlier experience in England, India, and The Bahamas. As a devoted Sister of Charity of New York, she willingly accepted the environment of storms, major earthquakes, and violent hurricanes that dumped torrential rains on the mountainous area that came to be her home. Her focus, instead, was on what she frequently termed “the people … the poor people.” And those “poor people” soon grew to love the “Madre” like no other angel they had ever known.

Read the moving story of her work