SOLT Sister Celebrates 99th Birthday

SOLT Sister Mary of the Incarnation (Anna) Kiernan, who joined the SOLT Sisters in their very first group in 1958, turned 99 on Saturday, July 19.

The Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) now has more than 120 Sisters around the world, along with 130 priests and many hundreds of lay members.

Sister Mary of the Incarnation has lived and worked in many of the SOLT missions over her 56 years of religious life.

She served Native Americans in New Mexico and Arizona, particularly the Hopi Tribe, and worked with the poor in urban areas such as Kansas City. She walked with Dr. Martin Luther King and thousands of nonviolent demonstrators in 1965 in the famous “Walk from Selma” to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

She is a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, attended St. Patrick’s parish, where Father James H. Flanagan, the Founder of SOLT was assistant pastor. It was there that Father Flanagan gave spiritual direction for three years to this young school teacher.

In 1957, five years after his ordination to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Boston, Father Flanagan was given permission to begin SOLT in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe under the sponsorship of Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne. Anna Kiernan and a number of other laity were the first to join Fr. Flanagan in Holman, New Mexico.

Sister Mary of the Incarnation currently resides at the SOLT Formation Center in Bosque, New Mexico in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, where Saturday will just be another day in the life of this SOLT sister called by God for service in the church.