Sister Jean Clare Rohe, O.S.F., oldest member of Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, dies at 104

Franciscan Sister Jean Clare Rohe, 104, the oldest member of Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, died at her congregation’s motherhouse in Aston, Pa., May 16. She had been a professed member of her order for 84 years. 

Sister Jean Clare (Regina Catherine Rohe) was born in Baltimore and lived on a farm where the White Marsh Mall is now located. She was a parishioner of St. Joseph in Fullerton. 

“I always wanted to be a sister,” Sister Jean Clare told the Catholic Review in a 2008 interview. “My cousin was going (into the convent), and I said to the pastor, ‘Can I go, too?’” 

Then a 17-year-old junior at Seton High School in Baltimore, Sister Jean Clare was allowed to enter the Franciscan religious community in 1935 with her cousin and finish high school in the motherhouse. She professed her first vows in 1938.

Her sister, Franciscan Sister Ellen Patricia Rohe, and cousins, Franciscan Sister Alice Rohe and Franciscan Sister John Catherine Rohe, were also members of the congregation.  

Sister Jean Clare earned a bachelor’s degree in education/biology from Mount St. Mary University in Emmitsburg and a master’s degree in education/biology from what is now Morgan State University in Baltimore. 

As a science teacher in the 1960s, she received grants to do more study.

“In 1966, I had one in Portland (Maine),” she told the Catholic Review in the 2008 interview. “We were studying the rocky shores, and we were in long habits then. The rocks were slippery and you’d fall, and your hands would be bloody from the mollusks’ shells.”

She ministered for 48 years in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, teaching at Immaculate Conception School in Towson, Ss. Philip and James School in Baltimore, The Catholic High School of Baltimore and Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School in Essex. After she retired from teaching, she worked in the rectory at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Gardenville. 

St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, one of Sister Jean Clare’s former students at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, helped celebrate her 70th jubilee in Wilmington, Del., while he was then the auxiliary bishop of Baltimore in 2008.

A Christian wake service will be held at 9:30 a.m. May 23 at Assisi House in Aston. A funeral Mass will follow at 11 a.m.

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