2024 JUBILARIAN

Sister Cecilia Jacko, OSF
75th Jubilee

Sister Cecilia Jacko followed two of her older sisters into the convent when she entered the School Sisters of St. Francis in 1948, professing first vows in 1949. Brought up to love the Holy Spirit and making her First Communion on Pentecost 1942, Sister Cecilia has spent 75 years in service to the Lord.

The youngest of 15 children, Sister hails from a devoutly Catholic, working class family that worshipped at St. Mark Church in McKees Rocks. She described herself as “just a normal teenager” until the midpoint of her junior year at Mount Assisi Academy, when something shifted. “The Lord was working in his own way,” Sister recalls, as aspirations of entering religious life began to take hold.

By September 1948 — barely a month after reception — she was already at the front of a bustling classroom at St. Gabriel School on the North Side. There wasn’t even time to be nervous. “You went out with an enthusiasm because you’re a youngster,” Sister recalls of her earliest teaching days. “I remember having to shout over the sound of the streetcars outside so the first-graders could hear me.”

It was the first of some 30 years in teaching, during which she earned a master’s degree in educational counseling while serving at schools in New Castle, Canonsburg, Ellsworth, Ambridge, Tarentum, Farrell, Russellton and in San Antonio, Texas. Reminiscing about the places she’s served quickly elicits fond recollections of the children, the clergy and the other Sisters with whom she served. “I have such good memories of all these things,” she says with a chuckle.

Eventfully her path came full circle when she returned to Mount Assisi Academy, first as a teacher in the 1960s, and then as a guidance counselor in the 1970s. After the academy closed in 1978, Sister Cecilia started a new chapter in parish social ministry. For 35 years, she served the parishioners of St. Michael and Prince of Peace parishes on Pittsburgh’s South Side. She balanced visiting the sick with driving the elderly to medical appointments and other work among the people. The ministry soon became a labor of love, as she regularly visited each hospital and nursing home where her beloved parishioners were.

“I know I did good work there,” she says.

The relationships have endured well past her retirement in 2018. Often, she hasn’t realized her impact until there’s been a reunion, like a priest’s recent birthday party or a 2023 all-class reunion of Mount Assisi Academy.

With the decades, too, has come an ever-deepening relationship with God. “I’ve learned to love God as my Father. I depend on him immensely and I go to Him for everything,” she says. “God gives you the grace you need. His grace lets you persevere through the ins and outs of life.”