Throughout 51 years of ministry, Mary Jo Grethel ’61 of the Medical Mission Sisters has served to bring joy and love to lives around the world through healing. 

“Healing is all about love; love forgives and reconciles, love heals and unites,” says Grethel, who through her congregation has served missions in Afghanistan; Ghana, West Africa; Kampala, Uganda; and the United States. She has spent 38 years outside her own country, even celebrating her Golden Jubilee in Uganda in 2015.

“Over the years, the gift of each mission was joy,” she says in 2020. “I have been so blessed and enriched by the people and their basic goodness, beauty, hospitality and generosity. I have enjoyed the riches of culture, language and country. I will be forever grateful to God, to the people, and to MMS for all these opportunities.”

A member of the second graduating class at St. Pius X High School, Grethel started her high school years at the temporary home of St. Pius X in the basement at St. Charles Elementary School. Her class moved onto the St. Pius X campus at Louisiana and Indian School at the start of her junior year.

“At Pius X we had wonderful teachers and principal, and the program was very good,” she says. “We received an excellent education, and we were also well rounded in academics, sports and concern for others.”

Grethel was a cheerleader, participated in drama, and was a member of hospitality services, a club that welcomed visiting groups to campus and served refreshments. “We did all this in a nice environment conducive to personal growth and development, and we developed a desire to contribute something to our world,” she says.

Since she was a young girl growing up in Albuquerque, Grethel had the desire to dedicate her life to God and to be a missionary to those most in need. “I felt my call was confirmed during our Pius X senior year weekend retreat, which I took seriously,” she says. “On that retreat I made the decision that, yes, I will become a sister.”

She was ultimately drawn to the Medical Mission Sisters, an international and intercultural religious congregation of about 500 members of 25 nationalities serving in 18 countries. She especially appreciated their description of themselves as “Women of Faith … dedicated to Mary, Cause of our Joy.” Since then, she has experienced and treasured her international MMS congregation and her friendships with her sisters of so many nations and cultures and their mission of healing. 

After graduating from St. Pius X, Grethel began a degree in nursing at the University of New Mexico, where she attended for one year and worked as a nurse’s aide before joining the Sisters in October 1962. She made her first profession in August 1965 and was sent to the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit university that had just developed a holistic nursing program. The program aligned beautifully with Grethel’s interest in psycho-spiritual ministry and the MMS’s need for nurses.

“It was a newly developed holistic nursing program integrating body, mind and spirit, which then became the foundation and preparation for all my future ministry,” Grethel says.

Grethel completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing in 1969 and in 1970 was invited by her congregation to pioneer a new MMS mission in Afghanistan. “I knew that was where God was calling me and became the first MMS volunteer to join,” she says. 

With just one priest for the whole country, Mass was held in Jalalabad every six weeks to two months. The sisters had daily Communion services and weekly she and a doctor on the team took turns preparing an ecumenical service. “Our experience was similar to the early Christian community in so many ways,” she says. “After our weekly service with the families, we shared a potluck meal and visited. It was really lovely.”

The Afghan government initially invited them to work in a small town with many surrounding small villages in need of medical and nursing care. “Sometimes women in obstructed labor had to ride a camel or walk over the mountains and down to Jalalabad to deliver,” Grethel says of the situation. “Some delivered before they arrived; others never made it.”  

Her work eventually expanded to include operating a nursing school providing classroom and clinical nursing instruction for girls who typically were educated only to the ninth grade.

Her mission in Afghanistan ended in 1974, when, after a bloodless coup, the new Russian-influenced Afghan government asked them to move their work to a hospital in the capital. “We replied that we had been invited to care for those more needy in the province with less resources,” she said. “We were not given an option and our visas would not be renewed. It was very painful to leave these wonderful people and their beautiful country and culture.

“I did hear a few years ago the hospital is still functioning; the girls would now be fine young women doing nursing,” she says. “But when war took place, the bombing, it was so sad, I don’t know who is alive and who is not. When we left, we just prayed for them.”

Grethel returned to the U.S. in 1974, to vocation ministry, inviting young women to explore joining MMS and to study spiritual guidance. In 1981 she graduated with a certificate from the Institute for Spiritual Leadership which integrated a spiritual-psycho-social preparation for spiritual direction/accompaniment and a master’s degree from the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University in Chicago. By 1982, she was headed to Ghana, West Africa.

For 15 years, Grethel served in a wide range of roles in Ghana. She was a retreat and spiritual director and a trainer of catechists for an RCIA program that she had translated into the local language. She also served as Vocation Directress for the MMS and executive secretary for the national vocation association in Ghana, work in which she directed the development of a vocation book with the names and descriptions of all congregations in Ghana. She also became an expert in changing tires and navigating unpaved roads.

“I thank God that during my vocation ministry, we were blessed with our first Ghanaian vocation, a lovely young woman who was already 30 and mature, and a public health nurse-midwife with good experience,” she says. This sister is now on the MMS Society Leadership Team in the U.K. composed of five Sisters from India, Columbia, Indonesia, U.S. and Ghana.

Grethel returned to the U.S. for about two years in 1997, serving as a chaplain at a cancer center and its hospice ministry and providing self-esteem programs at an interim house for women just released from prison.

In late 1998, Grethel journeyed to Kampala, Uganda, to work in vocations for her congregation and served in the national vocation association. She directed retreats and classes for MMS postulants and others and provided workshops with a spiritual-psycho-social perspective for African priests and religious as well as men and women novices from at least eight African countries preparing for first vows. 

“I loved my ministry especially with the younger ones who were open, inquisitive, challenging and simply delightful,” she says. “They gave me much hope for the future of the Church in Uganda.”

Inspired by Grethel’s work, the SPX Class of 1961 at their 50th reunion in 2011 started a fund for the education needs of the MMS’s African Sisters, many of whom originally had  limited education in English but had to take national tests in the language. “We are so grateful for the class’s generous support and that of a couple of other alumni over the years through both prayer and donations,” Grethel says. ”We need our Sisters professionally trained to serve the sick and poor well – the need for financial support for their education and the needs of our African mission remain.”   

Grethel’s parish in Kampala was home to many HIV/AIDS victims and orphans. She supported the work of The Christian Caring Community, which began as a charismatic prayer group, caring for HIV/AIDS victims and orphans with healthcare, food and education.

From appreciation of the Ghanian proverb “God’s time is best” and “God will provide” to the impact of the Ugandan martyrs, serving in Africa influenced Grethel in many ways. “God is so much a part of so many Africans’ lives,” she says. “Everything began with a prayer, and conversation usually included God: God is able, God is great, by God’s grace all went well. I think anyone who goes there develops a greater sense of God’s all-encompassing presence.”

Since 2017, Grethel has served in the U.S. in Philadelphia and in January 2018 became the Formation/Integration Coordinator for the MMS in North America.

“It has been an educational, faith-filled and grace-filled ministry,” she says. “I realized that of my 55 years as a professed sister, I have had the privilege of living in community with one or more members of a nationality and culture other than Euro-American for 40 years. How enriching and what a privilege! Our own congregation is moving more toward Oneness with all peoples and all creation. We all belong together. That is what God created us to be — like a beautiful, living mosaic, sharing One Spirit, binding us all-together.”

For more information on the Medical Mission Sisters, visit https://www.medicalmissionsisters.org/