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Sr. Theresa Kane, of the Sisters of Mercy, passed away on August 22, 2024. Sr. Kane served in a variety of regional and national leadership positions with the Sisters of Mercy — including oversight of B��Ԫ (now B��Ԫ) as a Board of Trustees member (1966–70) — before becoming president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). Later, she served as campus minister for Our Lady of Victory Academy — in what is today Victory Hall at Mercy — and, from 1992 until 1995, as administrator of the Sisters of Mercy Dobbs Ferry motherhouse — in what is today, Mercy Hall.

In her role as LCWR president, Sr. Kane greeted Pope John Paul II during his 1979 visit to Washington, D.C. In her historically groundbreaking message to the pope, Sr. Kane urged him to consider opening to women all ministries of the church – which meant allowing women to serve as priests. As Mercy Professor Emerita Ann Grow (Philosophy), a longtime friend and colleague said many years later of Sr. Kane, “You don’t see her as a warrior type but she’s a warrior for her beliefs. She wanted women to be able to step forward and to be received in the church on an equal basis.”

Starting in 1995, Sr. Kane taught courses at Mercy as an adjunct faculty member. In 1999, she joined the full-time faculty of the then-Social and Behavioral Sciences Division as well as the then-Civic and Cultural Studies Division. She served in that capacity until 2017, after which — though officially retired — she continued to teach internship and capstone courses through 2019.

Throughout her long and varied career, Sr. Kane sought to promote women’s rights and the betterment of humanity around the world and in the New York area. She served as founding member of the Intercommunity Center for Justice and Peace, US representative to the Union of International Superiors General, board member and president of the Washington Office on Latin America, founding member and first vice president of the board of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, and board member of the National Catholic Reporter. Locally, she served on the Board of Directors of two social service centers in the Bronx, the Mercy Center of Mott Haven and the Thorpe Residence in the South Bronx. For her efforts, she was recognized as winner of the 1999 National Catholic Leadership Award from Call to Action.

Sr. Kane epitomized the spirit of transformational education at B��Ԫ through her commitment to empowering students and to the value of mutuality in teaching and learning. Colleagues in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences remember her as supportive to all and quick to check in with junior faculty in particular. In 1999, she was honored as recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award at the Bronx Campus as judged by students; in 2005, she received the Outstanding Teaching Award as judged by her faculty colleagues; and in 2015 she received a Lifetime Achievement award from Mercy. A scholarship in her name — the “Sr. Theresa Kane, RSM, Agent of Change Scholarship” — has been established for a student who has completed any undergraduate degree in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and has shown outstanding work.

Honorable Dominic R. Massaro, H.D. ’75, ’95, a prominent judge and former member of Mercy’s Board of Trustees, passed away on December 18, 2024. Justice Massaro served on the Board of Trustees from 1977–1980, 1983–1992 and 1993– 1995. He also received two honorary degrees from Mercy; a Doctor of Laws in 1975 and a Doctor of Letters in 1995.

Born and raised in the Bronx, he dedicated his career to public service. He was appointed as Justice of the New York State Supreme Court in 1987 and prior to that, Massaro served seven years as a New York City, then New York State Human Rights Commissioner. On the Federal level, he also served as a member of the New York Appeals Board of the Selective Service System from 1969 to 1976.

A trustee and member of many Bronx institutions, Justice Massaro was a recipient of Bronx County’s “Distinguished Community Service Award.” He served as president of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce and of the Gramercy Boys’ Club of New York, was board chairman of the Bronx County Civic Association and served on local boards of the Police Athletic League, Boy Scouts of America, Red Cross, Cancer Care, Council on the Arts, Council for Environmental Quality and the YMCA, among others.

Justice Massaro was also a well-regarded member of the Italian American community. He served as chair of the Board of Governors of the Verrazzano Institute, dedicated to the discovery, preservation and dissemination of knowledge about Italian and other Mediterranean cultural traditions. It was established at B��Ԫ’s Westchester Campus. He worked closely with former Mercy President Donald Grunewald to acquire and name the estate now known as Verrazzano Hall. He also served as chair of the Board of Overseers of the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum and was past president of the Italian-American ESCA (Educational, Social, Civil, American-Italian) Club of New York Youth Auxiliary and of both the Italian-American Center for Urban Affairs and the Italian-American Coalition of the City of New York. His professional and civic accomplishments won him numerous awards and citations. He was knighted five times, including the highest decoration, the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the President of the Republic of Italy in 1969 and by Pope Paul VI in the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem in 1973.

College of New Rochelle

Ethel Madden Bonneville SAS ’41
The Honorable Clara Louise Malone Gould SAS ’48
Rosamond Mole Malgieri SAS ’49
M. Joan Fraser Gately SAS ’50
Nancy Collins McKenna SAS ’51
Margaret Reynolds Charles SAS ’51
Maureen Costello Durkin SAS ’52
Caroline Pagnucco Meskers SAS ’52
Patricia Walsh Berntson SAS ’52
Anne Marie Weiler SAS ’52
Harriette Gillem Robinet SAS ’53
Ethelmarie Walsh Hunter SAS ’53
Claire Waterbury Philips SAS ’54
Mary Doyle Eglin SAS ’56
Margaret McCreery Kane SAS ’56
Donna Walsh Milne SAS ’56
Margaret Houlihan Lynch SAS ’57
Rev. Mary Ann DeMetsenaere Taylor SAS ’58
Carol Hopkins DeRuggiero SAS ’58
Barbara Mackinnon Kuttner SAS ’58
Gloria Canal Doino SAS ’60
Sr. Patricia Couture, OSU SAS ’60
Claire Monaghan SAS ’60
Eleanor Shea Buckley SAS ’60
Janet Maroney Connolly ’61
Helen Dunn Cunney SAS ’62
Carol Gill Clifford SAS ’62
Linda Gorman Lapointe SAS ’62
Susan Herald Clarke SAS ’62
Elizabeth Riggio Whelan SAS ’62
Teresita Dwyer O’Leary SAS ’63
Anita Gay Winkler SAS ’63
Elaine Donovan Blair SAS ’64, GS ’92
Sr. Bridget Haase, OSU SAS ’65
Patricia Rice Devereaux SAS ’65
Kathleen Sloggatt SAS ’65
Sr. Sheila Campbell, OSU SAS ’68
Eileen Clavin O’Connor SAS ’69

Barbara Farrell Dingee SAS ’69
Patricia Phelan SAS ’69
Cathleen Donovan Myatt SAS ’70
Nancy Sarrantonio Alfonso SAS ’70, GS ’75
Donna Demarest SAS ’71
Mary Ann Zeender Donovan SAS ’71
Mary O’Mara SAS ’73
Ann Marie O’Neill Geraghty SAS ’73
Annette Wiley Robidoux SAS ’74
Gina Tapogna Broadbent SAS ’75
Audrey Chatzky GS ’77
Beverly Voltz Mittelstadt GS ’82
Alice Stephens SNR ’85
Marilyn Maynard GS ’86
Julia Landau GS ’88
Michelle Malcolm SN ’92
Dorothy Wade SNR ’94
Jeanne Fritz SNR ’96
Robert Saul SNR ’99
Thomas Donohue, CNR Friend
Elizabeth LeVaca, CNR Friend

B��Ԫ

Catherine Graf Celtruda ’67
Maryann DeCesare Gangi ’68
Angela Vitale Houlihan ’69
Verne Urbano ’75
Charlene Healey Klapwald ’81
Paul Schirizzo ’83
Paul Gebhardt ’86
Daniel Raftery ’87
Frances Twiss ’89
Laura Barnwell ’90
Richard Cunningham ’93
Ana Bonilla ’97
Melba John Riley ’97
John Turowski ’07
Gabriel Harvey ’17

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