Sister Rosemary Huber

Born: August 3, 1921
Entered: February 1, 1954
Died: November 22, 2025

We live… “so that no one can take us for anything but missioners.” These lines of our foundress, Mother Mary Joseph, surely applied to Sister Rosemary Huber. She struggled these last days, but she did so with peace and courage until she breathed her last at 11:06 PM on November 22, 2025, in our Maryknoll Sisters Home Care. She was 94 years old and had been a Maryknoll Sister for 71 years. She wrote in 1989 in her letter on organ donation: “I am called to move forward to meet death for, in doing so, I believe I go to meet God.” And now she has done that, a woman of her word.

Rosemary Kathleen Huber was born in Borden, Indiana to Joseph and Mary Koetter Huber on August 3, 1921. She had four sisters and six brothers; four of her siblings have pre-deceased her. The family farm in Starlight, IN, was a source of strength and pride for Rosemary her whole life—she learned to garden and cook as did all her siblings. She graduated from the Academy of the Immaculate Conception at the Benedictine Monastery in Ferdinand, Indiana in 1949, after completing eight years at St. John’s elementary school. She then worked as administrative assistant at her uncle’s company until she entered the Maryknoll Sisters at Valley Park, Missouri on February 1, 1954. Her first vows were on September 8, 1956, followed by a year of mission promotion. She made her final vows at Maryknoll, NY on September 8, 1962. Rosemary received her Bachelor of Science in Education from Mary Rogers College in June, 1963 and went on to receive a Master’s Degree in hospital administration from St. Louis University in June 1964 with a residency in Michigan from 1964-1965.

Rosemary was assigned to Pusan, Korea in 1965 where she worked part-time in the Maryknoll Hospital, and also worked with Sister Gabriella Mulherin in the Cooperative Education Institute in Seoul which fostered credit unions as a path out of poverty. From 1969 to 1972, Rosemary was director of support services at the Maryknoll Sisters Center, NY. She was called to become part of the new mission commitment in Bandung, Indonesia in 1972. She and three other sisters lived at first with the Ursuline Community in Bandung, a group that supported and encouraged the Maryknoll presence for all its years in Indonesia. The sisters soon left the Ursuline convent for a small house in a crowded Muslim area where they were met at first with some suspicion, but later were welcomed as neighbors and wholly absorbed into the community around them. Rosemary’s ministry was to serve as Advisor to the Director of the Provincial Hospital. On the first day in her office, she was greeted tentatively with “Excuse me, Mr. white woman…”.  Her initial assignment was to create a records system from a closet filled with fragments of crumbling paper, in a culture where people change their names with any big life event—marriage, circumcision, etc. Only Rosemary could have done it! She went on to serve both in provincial health management as well as national management in Jakarta for the Association of Voluntary Health Services, and the Center for Bio-Medical Ethics. In her work with the former group, she traveled throughout the Indonesian archipelago, giving management updates to local and provincial hospitals.

When the Indonesia mission closed because of visa issues, she went with three other sisters to a new mission in Aileu, East Timor in 1991, and briefly did medical-pastoral work there. Rosemary was called back to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in 1992 to become Center Health Administrator, which she did for five years. After her service, she was called yet again to be part of a new commitment in Nepal. She had long had an interest in inter-religious dialogue and was quickly elected to the Monastic Inter-Religious Dialogue Group in Kathmandu. Her ministry was once again administration in Patan Hospital and part-time English teaching for the Jesuits at Xavier High School.

Rosemary was, in the best sense of the word, always a learner. A sample of her certificates includes: a  program in Catholic Hospital Administration, a Health Executive course at Cornell University, one in Inter-Religious Dialogue, a two-year program in spiritual direction from Mariandale Center, a course in bio-medical ethics, another in budgeting for social organizations at the New School, and even another degree program in a two-year moral theology MA from a The Jesuit University in Jakarta, Driyarkara. Rosemary also received certificates of appreciation from the Hasan Sadikin Provincial Hospital where she had worked for five years and one from the Association of Religious Sisters in Bandung.

After another stint in Congregational Service in the development department in communications as a staff writer, Rosemary was assigned to Monrovia as coordinator, a ministry she continued until 2010 when she returned to the Center and the Rogers community in 2011—retired for Rosemary meant doing all kinds of volunteer service for sisters in the Center communities. Her last transfer was to the Eden Community in 2019, where she lived out the rest of her long and full life.

We welcome Maryknoll Father Robert Lloyd, MM, Rosemary’s fellow missioner in Nepal, to preside this morning at her mass of resurrection.