Recent Deaths

Sister Mary Catherine Izral, OSM
1919 - 2016

Sister Mary Catherine Izral, OSM, 97, died peacefully November 17, 2016, at Regina Senior Living, Hastings, Minn.

She was born in Chicago on April 30, 1919, to John and Teresa (Zahora) Izral, who immigrated to the U.S. from Jablonka, a village in Austria-Hungary that today is part of Poland. Her family moved to a farm in Catawba, Wis., when she was in first grade. After completing high school she moved back to Chicago, where she worked in the hosiery department at Sears “when they still had silk socks,” she would recall with a grin. She entered the convent of the Servants of Mary in Ladysmith in 1939 and professed first vows in 1941. Last August she celebrated 75 years of religious profession.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of St. Catherine and a master’s from the University of Minnesota. She taught in Catholic elementary schools in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Illinois for 35 years and later taught religious education and did sacristy work at St. Agnes Parish in Saint Paul, Minn. She retired to Regina Senior Living in 2007.

She was preceded in death by her parents and five sisters. She is survived by her brother John, a retired Catholic priest living in Mississippi, and the Ladysmith Servite Sisters.

Visitation was on November 22, at our Lady of Sorrows Church in Ladysmith, followed by the Mass of Christian Burial. Burial was in the convent cemetery in Ladysmith

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