Sister Maria Juletta      

Sister  Maria  Juletta                     ND 5144                  PDF Download

Maria Kern

Maria Regina Province, Coesfeld, Germany

Date and Place of Birth:              10 August 1932           Dinklage
Date and Place of Profession:   15 August 1959           Coesfeld
Date and Place des Death:         09 January 2023         Coesfeld, Kloster Annenthal
Date and Place of Burial:            17 January 2023         Coesfeld, Convent Cemetery

God, let your joy grow in me, so that I can praise you and make others happy!

Sister Maria Juletta called these lines her impulse prayer, which accompanied her throughout her religious life. The effect of this prayer has shaped her life, whether in the community of her co-sisters or in professional practice.

Maria Kern experienced her childhood and youth in a large family with nine brothers and two sisters. After leaving school in 1947, she stayed in her parental home for a year to help her mother. A knee condition developed which required several operations over a period of years.

In May 1950 she left the parental home and worked as a housekeeper in various places. Her great desire was to work with children. Therefore, in 1953 she went to Damme to the St. Antoniusstift and worked there as a support for the sister in charge of one group in our children’s home. Before she entered our community in October 1956, she had to undergo another knee operation. Regarding the success of the doctors, Sister Maria Juletta wrote in her biography: “May the doctors attribute this healing to their art. I owe this healing to blessed Mother Julie Billiart, whom I came to know in Damme and to whom I developed a devotion even before I began my religious life, and whose relic I carried with me.”

In the first years of her religious life, Sister Maria Juletta worked in the boarding school of the special school for children with learning disabilities at St. Vincenzhaus in Cloppenburg in a group of 7- 9 year old boys.

After her perpetual profession, Sister Maria Juletta was trained as a state-approved children’s caretaker. In the children’s home St. Antoniusstift in Damme, Sister Maria Juletta was able to use her talents as an educator for almost twenty years. Whether it was working with troubled and difficult-to-educate boys or in earlier times at the St. Vincenzhaus in Cloppenburg, work certificates state that Sister Maria Juletta’s professional qualities and her personal behavior were a happy combination. After retiring from her educational activities, she received regular visits from some alumni who still felt closely connected to her.

From 1988 until 1993, Sister Maria Juletta lovingly and prudently cared for the guests in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, who appreciated her reserved manner. Then she came to the Julia Community in Marienhain to be, as she said, a housemother and to take over receptionist duties.

It wasn’t until 2014 that her final retirement began at the care-center for senior sisters in Vechta. After a short interim stay in the Hedwigstift, she moved to the senior center in Kloster Annenthal in Coesfeld in 2018, where she really “blossomed” and participated in the life of the community and the many offers with much joy.

May our good God now make her joy complete.