Long-time educator’s legacy is ‘instilling faith’

But the 86-year-old, who is retiring this year as religious director at St. Dominic School in New Orleans, has lived a life of anything but woe.
    

“It’s been very joyful,” said Sister Marie Jo, a Catholic educator for almost 70 years.
    

  Every morning since 1991, when she joined St. Dominic as assistant principal, she’s led the faculty and student body in prayer.
   

“She is the heart and soul of our school,” said long-time faculty member Amy Faciane, a second-grade teacher who now is in the resources department. “She is the spiritual director of faculty and our children. She has led by example and is led by faith.”
 

Sister was early nomad
    

Long before she arrived in New Orleans in 1970 to be assistant superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Sister Marie Jo’s spirituality was formed first in her faith-filled family and then reinforced by the Sisters of the Precious Blood and the School Sisters of Notre Dame, who brought catechism to the Lazzeri home of seven children. Sister Marie Jo was the youngest. 
    

Her calling to religious life came early as a child. She counted Sister LeClaire’s influence as leading her on her spiritual journey. 
    

“She was a beautiful young woman who was very touching and spiritual,” Sister Marie Jo said. “She would reach out, and if there was anything going on in the parish, she would bring me.”
    

Right after high school graduation in 1951, her parents drove her to the School Sisters of Notre Dame motherhouse to join the order. In her third year, she “practiced taught” first grade in St. Charles, Missouri, while attending school to be an educator. She entered the novitiate in 1953 and professed first vows in 1954, among 59 others in her class. She was sent to teach first grade in St. Louis at St. Wenceslaus School.
    

“I still have students who I keep in touch with from there,” she said, but added students from every place she’s taught have corresponded with her over the years.
    

Her teaching path follows the growth of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Catholic schools in the South. Sister Marie Jo was tapped to teach first grade near Corpus Christi, Texas, then in Dallas, where also she knocked on doors to fundraise for a motherhouse; then she was appointed principal at St. Paul’s in Fort Worth – with three nuns younger than she.
  

“I was there three years with teachers who were older than myself, thank God,” she laughed, remembering being young and in charge.
    

Her first foray into Louisiana came when Sister Marie Jo was sent to Baton Rouge to be principal of St. Gerard Majella Elementary school (kindergarten through sixth grade, with a middle and high school adjacent to it).
    

From there, she became an assistant superintendent in the Office of Catholic Schools in Baton Rouge under Sacred Heart Brother Felician Fourrier for eight years. That experience led to a position as assistant superintendent of Catholic schools in New Orleans.
    

“I said, ‘I don’t want to,’ but went to New Orleans in 1970,” she said. “I applied for the job and hoped I wouldn’t get it, but I did.”
    

It was a position she held for 13 years under former superintendent Howard Jenkins, helping schools with curriculum in downtown New Orleans, Metairie, Harahan, Chalmette, Bogalusa and elsewhere in the archdiocese. She never returned to the classroom.
    

“I did a lot of work with faculty,” she said. “I did a lot of work on spirituality.”
    

Sister Marie Jo joined St. Dominic’s faculty as a counselor and assistant principal and became its religious director.
 

St. Dominic will miss her
    

It was her spiritual work with faculty and students – always getting them to think “what God is asking of them each day” – that is her legacy.
    

The school planned to name its April fair after Sister Marie Jo, said principal Ashley Lynn Ogden, and many alumni were to come in to bid their farewell to her. COVID-19 changed that, and goodbyes are being delivered in a quiet, individual way.
    

Sister Marie Jo is already missed by those, such as kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Talbot, who counts her as an invaluable mentor and friend.
    

“She’s the pulse of the school,” said Talbot, religious education director. “She is the core of our Catholicism and our faith. Being a teacher under Sister taught me three times more than I’ve ever learned about our faith and being a good person and helping others. She’s tough, but she wants students to strive to be the best they can be and do what God put them here to do.” 
    

Sister Marie Jo is leaving New Orleans in June for St. Louis.
    

“I’m looking forward to living in my motherhouse with a lot of my classmates,” she said. “I have no idea what I’ll be doing.”
    

She has had no regrets as a religious.
    

“My vocation is one of the greatest gifts that I have received from God,” she said. “All my religious life, I have tried to live that vocation – the call of the (School Sisters of Notre Dame) founders” to show the love of God by sharing hope, faith and love.
    

Christine Bordelon can be reached at [email protected].