Sister M. Visitation Hines, IHM

Sister M. Visitation Hines, IHM, of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary died on October 4, 1915, at the West Side Hospital in Scranton, PA.

She was born on April 6, 1886, in Pittston, PA, and given the name Agnes C. She was the daughter of Thomas J. and Anna Mullen Hines.She was a graduate of Central State Normal School. She entered the IHM Congregation on July 2, 1907, received the religious habit on April 13, 1909, and made profession of her vows on August 2, 1911.

From September of 1911 until the time of her death, Sister Visitation served as a teacher at St. Cecilia Academy in Scranton, PA.

She is survived by a brother, Thomas C. Hines, and three sisters, Sister M. Demetrius, IHM, Margaret Walsh, and Nona Theresa Lally.

The funeral will be Wednesday, October 6 at 9:30 a.m. in the chapel at Mount St. Mary’s Motherhouse in Scranton. Interment will follow at the Marywood College Cemetery, on the grounds of Marywood College in Scranton, PA.

“It is noticeable that in the religious life all works of worth prosper only in the shadow of the Cross. The opening of Marywood College was followed by a calamity, the sudden death of our dear Sister M. Visitation Hines, who was killed by an automobile on October 4, 1915. Sister M. Visitation and Sister M. Francesca, both of Saint Cecilia’s Academy, were on their way home from Saint Ann’s Monastery, where they had gone to Confession. As they were crossing Main Avenue, below the monastery, an automobile struck Sister M. Visitation and dragged her several feet. Father Patrick was hastily summoned, but Sister was unconscious. The dying Sister was placed in an automobile and taken to the West Side Hospital. She never regained consciousness and before the hospital was reached her pure soul had entered into the house of its Eternity.

Sister M. Visitation’s awful death cast a shadow of gloom not only over the community, but over the entire city. Every heart was sad, for all felt that it was an untimely taking away of a young life full of promise.

Sister M. Visitation Hines was a young religious of superior attainments. The training she had received along the chosen lines of her vocation rendered her peculiarly fitted to the work of teaching. She was a successful teacher and was much beloved by her pupils. She was of a bright, happy disposition, and the cheerfulness with which she fulfilled her obligations endeared her to her Sisters in the community. In her funeral sermon the Right Reverend Bishop said that though “death had come to her like a thief in the night, it did not find her unprepared. Her whole life, both in the convent and out of it, had been but a preparation for the supreme hour. When she lay under that automobile on the open street in Hyde Park, crushed and mangled, she was prepared for that hour, because all her days and hours were spent in preparation for the supreme moment.”‘

Excerpted from The Sisters of the I.H.M.: The Story of The Founding of The Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and Their Work In The Scranton Diocese by Sister M. Immaculata Gillespie, IHM, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, NY, 1921, pgs. 455, 456