By Catholic Review Staff
A funeral Mass for Sister of Mercy Helen Christensen, a longtime Loyola University Maryland mathematics professor, was offered Aug. 6 at Mercy Villa in Baltimore. Sister Helen died Aug. 2. She was 85.
Sister Helen grew up in Florida. She attended Mount St. Agnes College in Baltimore for three years before joining the Sisters of Mercy novitiate in 1946. She taught at schools in Maryland and Alabama, including St. Cecilia School in West Baltimore from 1948 to 1949 and Mount Washington Country School for Boys from 1950 to 1951.
She earned a master’s degree and pursued additional graduate work in mathematics at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., before teaching at Mount St. Agnes from 1966 to 1971, the year the college merged with Loyola College, now Loyola University Maryland. She then taught at Loyola from 1971 to 2006, when she retired.
Sister Helen also taught during the summer for 16 years at Meharry Medical College in Nashville. According to Sister of Mercy Augusta Reilly, Sister Helen had a “passionate commitment” to her students, and authored a textbook for non-math majors.
In 1983, Sister Helen developed Loyola’s fledgling National Fellowships Committee, which helped 71 students win national post-graduate fellowships in the years she directed the program.
Copyright (c) Aug. 6, 2012 CatholicReview.org