Sister Febronia Jarosz, LSIC, 102, an instrumental figure in the Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception’s ministry in the Diocese of Camden, died July 3.
Born Bronislawa Jarosz on Sept. 26, 1921, in Suchy Grunt, Dabrowa County, Poland, Sister Febronia entered the Congregation of the Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in 1937, making her first vows in 1940 and her final vows in 1945.
A nursing student during World War II, Sister Febronia was the head surgical nurse in Gorlice County Hospital in Poland from 1943 to 1963.
Called to South Africa in 1963, she studied English and was a nurse and director of a home for underprivileged children, and for a preschool in Lyndhurst, Johannesburg. During this time, she served as the local superior of her order (1966-1972).
Sister Febronia made her way to the United States in 1972, when she was appointed superior provincial of the USA Province, and resided at the order’s then-provincialate at Saint Joseph’s Convent in Woodbridge, N.J.
For the next two decades, she was a leader in expanding the Little Servant Sisters’ role in New Jersey.
A new senior center and nursing home was constructed and dedicated in Woodbridge, and in 1987, work was completed on the sisters’ new provincialate on Cherry Hill’s Cropwell Road. Nine years later, the order’s Blessed Edmund Early Childhood Education Center opened on the same grounds.
Sister Febronia also helped establish the Marian Residence for Senior Ladies in Cherry Hill, which ran from 1989-2009; she contributed further to Catholic education by sending the Little Servant Sisters to work in five diocesan schools in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, along with a mission among the poor in Ensenada, Mexico.
She was superior provincial from 1972 to 1984, and again from 1987 to 1996. In-between, she spent three years again serving children in South Africa.
Sister Febronia next served as community bursar and home nurse, until retiring in 2004. In January 2021, she was transferred to the Congregation’s Saint Joseph Senior Home in Woodbridge.
In announcing Sister Febronia’s passing, her religious community remembered a “humble, kindhearted, shrewd and cheerful religious with great trust in Divine Providence, [whose] service and happy life were marked by her love of Jesus, community and people whom she remembered in prayer.”
Sister Febronia is survived by her religious community, and her nieces and nephews in Poland, France and the United States.
A viewing will take place July 10 from 9-11:30 a.m. at the Little Servant Sisters Provincialate Chapel, 1000 Cropwell Road, Cherry Hill. The viewing will be followed by a Mass of Christian Burial. Internment will take place at Saint Joseph’s Cemetery, Chews Landing.
Memorial contributions may be sent to the Little Servant Sisters, 1000 Cropwell Road, Cherry Hill, NJ, 08003.
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