Irma Patsy Reiss, RSCJ

Birth: February 3, 1936
Profession: February 5, 1966
Death: August 11, 2024

Religious of the Sacred Heart, Irma Patricia “Patsy” Reiss died on August 11, 2024, in Albany, New York. She was 88 years old and a religious for 67 years. Patsy was born on February 3, 1936, in New York City, to John R. Reiss and Irma C. Reiss. She had a very close relationship with her three sisters and brother, often speaking daily to them.

Patsy graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1953. She attended Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois, and earned a BA in Philosophy in 1957. After she graduated from Barat, she entered the Society of the Sacred Heart at Kenwood in August that same year. Patsy pronounced her first vows at Kenwood in 1960. She continued at Barat, earning an MA in Education and Philosophy in 1964.

From 1961 to 1965, she was middle school head at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Rochester New York, and later at 91st Street.

After she made her final profession in Rome in 1966, she went to Nottingham Academy in Buffalo, New York, until 1972. For the next thirty-three years, Sister Reiss devoted herself to the students, alumnae, and staff at Barat College in campus ministry and as a spiritual director until the school closed in 2005 after 101 years.

Shortly before the school closed, the Board of Trustees at Barat awarded Sister Reiss an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. During the conferral, the chair of the board of trustees stated in his introduction, “Sister Patsy is a Barat legend. For thirty-three years, she has been a source of comfort, strength and inspiration to the Barat community. Her faith and prayers have provided us all an inner peace and the knowledge that we are in her spiritual care. Greatness does indeed work through her and she does see the Divine in us all.”

Sister Reiss cherished her years at Barat. In the winter 2009 issue of Heart magazine, she shared, “In my years at Barat, I felt a clear, strong call to be a loving, prayerful RSCJ presence, not only for the resident students with whom I lived but for our whole Barat Community.”

Sister Reiss was sent to the Oakwood Retirement Center in 2005 to serve as a prayer companion and guide to the RSCJ there, many of whom she knew from her years at Barat. The RSCJ at Oakwood were eager to have her accessible to them, one of them commenting, “Patsy has so much love to give. And we have so much need of her love at this moment. It will be a gift of grace to have her here.” She remained in this role at Oakwood until 2009, after which she went to Woodlands Academy in Lake Forest, IL where she served as a spiritual presence at the school for eleven years, during which she continued to foster connections and nurture relationships and to “practice the art of being present.”

In 2020, Sister Reiss retired to the Avila Community in Albany, and in 2024, needing more care, she moved to Teresian House. On August 11, Sister Reiss peacefully went to God.

Her legacy is her immense heart and her prayer for others.  Everyone she knew, she knew not by memory but “by heart.”

A funeral liturgy will be celebrated for Sister Reiss on Monday, August 19, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. at the Church of St. Madeleine Sophie, 3500 Carman Road, Schenectady, NY 12304, followed by burial in the Cemetery of the Religious of the Sacred Heart at Kenwood. A memorial liturgy will be held for Sister Reiss at Woodlands Academy in Lake Forest, IL on Saturday, September 21, 2024, at 4 p.m.

Memorial contributions may be made in memory of Sister Reiss to the Society of the Sacred Heart, P.O. Box 958047, St. Louis, MO 63195-8047, or online at https://rscj.org/donate.