Sister Monica is remembered as an excellent math teacher who maintained a well-run and organized classroom. Students recall the respectful way she treated everyone. Her gentle manner had a calming effect on others.

Sister Monica Josephine Griffin, Sister Monica Maureen, was born March 19, 1935, in the Bronx, New York, one of two children, a son and a daughter of William and Della McDonnell Griffin. Monica attended Saint Raymond Elementary School and Saint Barnabas High School, both in the Bronx, and entered the Sisters of Charity of New York on September 8, 1953. Sister Monica Maureen earned a BA in Mathematics from College (University) of Mount Saint Vincent and an MA in Elementary Education from Seton Hall University, New Jersey. 

Sister Monica’s fifty-four years of active ministry were served in elementary education and in positions of finance responsibility. Over the course of twenty-nine years, she taught almost every elementary grade serving at Saints Peter and Paul and Our Lady of Angels in the Bronx, Saint John the Evangelist, White Plains, Saint Joachim, Beacon, and Saint Paul, Manhattan, including parish youth ministry. Sister Monica offered her finance skills at Queens Daughters Day Nursery, Yonkers, Sisters of Charity Center, the Bronx, and for twenty years at Church of the Incarnation, Manhattan. During her retirement, Sister Monica lived at Mount Saint Vincent Convent and later moved to Cabrini of Westchester in Dobbs Ferry. She died there on Wednesday, April 23rd in the seventy-second year of commitment as a Sister of Charity of New York.

Sister Monica is remembered as an excellent math teacher who maintained a well-run and organized classroom. Students recall the respectful way she treated everyone. Her gentle manner had a calming effect on others. She formed community bonds with a group of card-playing sisters and associates that lasted for several years. Shared stories and genuine laughter filled the room on the Friday night gatherings. Sister Monica and her brother, Michael, a faithful volunteer with the retired sisters at Convent of Mary the Queen, remained close during their lives. His visits with his sister at Cabrini of Westchester lifted the spirits of both.

Sister Monica, you lived a life journey of belief that death is a call by a gracious God to an eternal embrace of love. The journey is completed by your “Yes” to a life of fullness that is beyond anything we can comprehend. Go in peace to meet our God of abundant mercy.