Mother Lucille Cutrone, CFR, was remembered as a “devoted daughter of the Church” during her Mass of Christian Burial celebrated Nov. 4 in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.
Mother Lucille, a founding member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal – which has a mission in Atlantic City – died Oct. 27. She was 77.
“How grateful we CFR sisters are for her persevering ‘yes’ and faithfulness in living and imparting our charism to us over the past 36 years,” said Mother Francis O’Donnell, CFR, the current General Servant.
Clergy, family, friends and men and women religious came from far and wide to pay their respects to Mother Lucille, including Bishop Dennis Sullivan, who prayed with the community during solemn vespers the evening of Nov. 3. The next morning’s Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York. Bishops including Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Williams sprinkled Mother Lucille’s casket with holy water as it left the church, bound for Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.
Thinking back to a month ago, when Mother Lucille was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Mother Francis recalled the encouragement her fellow religious sister offered the community.
“As the sisters shed some tears, she was radiant with an otherworldly joy, as if she had just received the call she had been eagerly waiting her whole life for. Jesus, at long last, was calling her home to heaven,” Mother Francis said.
“She said to me in her last days, beaming amidst her sufferings: ‘This is a great life, but the best is yet to come,” Mother Francis said. “She wasn’t perfect, but she did the best she could and left the rest to God, firmly trusting in Romans 8 that ‘God works for the good of those who love him.’ She taught us the same.”
Deeply believing in “how loving and merciful our God is, and how powerfully present Jesus is in the sacraments, she joyfully spent her life to the very end sharing that Good News with as many people as possible,” Mother Francis said.
Father Glenn Sudano, CFR, remembered Mother Lucille’s beautiful smile, adding that her baptismal name, Lucille, came from the Latin word for “light.”
“If you would ask her or comment to her about this light that we would see emanating from her face, she would tell us … that it wasn’t from her, but it was from Him. It was not generated within, but generously poured out from above,” Father Sudano preached in his homily.
Individuals like Mother Lucille, he recalled, “are an inspiration to us, but … also a provocation to us, because if some hearts and souls can be so pure, and so many faces of people radiate the light of God, should [that] not be the same for ourselves?”
Born Lucille Angela Cutrone on August 7, 1947, in Brooklyn, she was invested Sister Lucille of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Aug. 2, 1989. She professed temporary vows two years later, and on Aug. 22, 1995, Sister Lucille professed final vows.
She served as the first General Servant of the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal from 1995 to 2018, leading the community in compassion for the poor and suffering. After beginning in the South Bronx, she opened five convents: Bronx, N.Y.; East Harlem, N.Y.; Leeds, England; Drogheda, Ireland; and Atlantic City, N.J.
She had been recently diagnosed with AML leukemia, which affects the blood and bone marrow.
Mother Lucille’s Mass of Christian Burial was livestreamed. To view the replay, visit youtube.com/watch?v=3J1lBLMjJ-g.
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