A live webcast of Sister Jean’s Memorial Mass will be available by clicking here at 5:15 p.m. EST. on Monday, Feb. 6.
A Memorial Mass will be held at the University of Notre Dame on Feb. 6 (Monday) in memory of Sister Jean Lenz, O.S.F., former assistant vice president for student affairs at the University. Sister Lenz died Jan. 21 at Our Lady of the Angels Retirement Home in Joliet, Ill., after a long illness. She was 81 years old.
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president, will preside at the Mass, which will begin at 5:15 p.m. in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the Notre Dame campus.
Visitation will be held Wednesday (Jan. 25) from 2 to 7 p.m. at Our Lady of the Angels Retirement Home, 1201 Wyoming Ave., Joliet, Ill., followed by a funeral Mass at 7 p.m. Burial will be Thursday (Jan. 26) at 9 a.m. in Resurrection Cemetery, 200 W. Romeo Rd., Romeoville, Ill.
A Chicago native and a Franciscan sister of the Congregation of the Third Order of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate, Sister Lenz, who earned a master’s degree from Notre Dame in 1967, was among the first women rectors on campus following the University’s transition to coeducation in 1972 after 130 years as an all-male institution.
As an administrator, teacher, mentor and alumna of the University, Sister Jean shaped and shared the experience of its first generation of women. “When I first came to campus, I had planned to assist Notre Dame’s first women for a year or two,” she said when she retired three years ago. “I’m surprised, delighted and grateful that those years turned into 36 years of wonderful ministry.”