If you refine this purpose even further you'll find, in Sister Marie, incredible compassion for "the dignity of the human person." She strived to apply such concern to every patient she cared for, all the nursing students she taught, throughout her 53-year ministry in many modalities of health care in Wisconsin, Idaho and New York.
 

But it was a "call to do clinical nursing" and a position at Eau Claire Family Medicine (in Wisconsin) that included instructing family practice residents in geriatric care that brought her face-to-face with an experience that changed her ministry, her life. The program incorporated home visits for patients to which she accompanied her students. One woman they cared for had a heart condition, 21 birds and had lived in the home most of her life. When her health did not improve, "we talked her into moving into a nursing home. And here comes the teaching moment," Sister Marie shares. "When I went to visit her there I saw a very scared, disoriented woman and asked myself 'What have we done?'"
 

What FSPA has and continues to do is foster concern for respect and quality of life. "I recall" says Sister Marie of the time when the community came together to create its tenets of ministry, "this particular statement: 'To heal with compassion and forgiveness.' Again, it claims the mission of FSPA in the profession of healing and carries, for me, much meaning."
 

In fact it's her passion. It's a perpetual call, she firmly believes, "for culture change in long-term care." And Sister Marie continues to answer it through Pioneer Network; a group she supported professionally and continues to uphold (along with many other FSPA social justice ministries like immigration and homelessness) through volunteerism. "Pioneer Network is an organization of energized and motivated people working to change the culture of long-term care from familiar nursing home, illness-oriented settings to a vital place where choice and purposeful living are key elements. This belief also calls me to stay connected with many of our elder sisters to give opportunities for one-on-one interactions to promote meaning in their lives and my own."
 

Such desire to nurture - fundamental for care givers - is why Sister Marie accompanies sisters to medical appointments; "to listen and help them make their own choices." This mission, too, "is why I choose to stay connected to sisters at the Villa," the FSPA skilled-care retirement home in La Crosse. Just to "pay attention and call them by name" turns on "the light of life in their eyes."

And Sister Marie's deep commitment to the dignity of the human person - her patients of the past and sisters in community today - is witnessed by all. After supporting an FSPA whose commitment to ministry outshined a call to retire and move closer to her FSPA community, she heard someone say "I hear you're out to promote the sisters' choices."

"Yes," replied Sister Marie without hesitation. "Yes I am."

An alumna of Viterbo University in La Crosse, Sister Marie Kyle was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award (presented to her by Viterbo President Rick Artman) in 2016. Photo courtesy of VIterbo University