2024 Jubilee Spotlight
Sister Cecilia Jacko lovingly places a historic photograph of Mount Assisi Convent at the altar during a special prayer service celebrating the transition of the Sisters’ Pittsburgh motherhouse in 2019 to a personal care home. Now Mt. Assisi Place, it remains her beloved home today. “I’ve been coming to this place since I was 3 years old,” she says. “How could I not love it?”
Guided by the Grace of God
Sister Cecilia Jacko reflects on 75 Years in Service to the Lord
By the time young Cecilia Jacko came along, her parents — railroad welder Jacob and homemaker Mary — already had seven girls and seven boys. “I was the tiebreaker,” she laughs, recalling her overflowing household in Windgap. “I was seen and not heard. My brothers and sisters talked for me.”
Each time the screen door slammed, it was likely someone heading off to church at St. Mark’s in McKees Rocks, where the faith-filled family not only attended Sunday Mass, but also went to evening Benediction and prayed the Rosary each night.
“The people of St. Mark’s were so religious,” she recalls. “We had devotions, the rosary, benediction. The parents were so involved. We really had something down there.”
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. This summer, she celebrates her Diamond Jubilee with friends, family and her Sisters in community.
Looking back, she pauses in wonder at her mother who raised 15 children, endured a heart condition, and never missed a Parents Teacher Guild meeting despite her children attending various Catholic schools. Her mother spoke only Slovak “but we understood each other perfectly,” Sister recalls of their chats during the many walks the pair took to church together.
By the time Cecilia was 3, older sister Julia had already gone to the convent at Mount Assisi. Five years later, another sister, Frances, followed. Yet, young Cecilia never dreamed of being a Sister herself. “I loved being with my girlfriends, but I had good discipline because I didn’t want to disappoint my mom.”
Among those girlfriends was Amelia Husava, who went on to become Sister Ricarda Husava. The unlikeliest of companions — with Cecilia so serious and “Ricky” not so much — soon became the closest of friends. They reveled in their days at the academy, giggling and gabbing their way through streetcar rides between McKees Rocks and Bellevue.
Sister Gemma Jerabek recruited the pair to help with Sunday retreats at the Capuchins’ St. Francis Retreat House, which required a two-streetcar ride to Beechwood Boulevard in Pittsburgh’s East End. It began as a way to get out of the house, but Cecilia quickly learned “the niceties of serving” while meticulously aligning tableware under Sister Gemma’s watchful eye.
It was at the midpoint of her junior year that something shifted. “The Lord was working in his own way,” Sister recalls, as aspirations of entering religious life began to take hold. Cecilia approached one of her mentors, Sister Magdalene Lovrich, and asked if she thought she had the makings of a Sister.
“I still remember her exact words to me,” Sisters recalls. “She said, ‘I think you’ll just have to try it out.’”
The tryout came quickly. On December 8, 1947, she left school as a day student. When she returned the next morning, she was dressed in all black and began life as an aspirant. “Suddenly I wasn’t allowed to talk to the day students, but Ricky and me … we found our ways.”
Entrance into the convent wasn’t buffered much by having two older Sisters in the same order. Julia was stationed in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Frances (then known as Sister Theophane) was among the first Sisters dispatched to establish a new mission in Chile.
Cecilia was received into the community in August 1948 (she was given the religious name Thomasine, but returned to her baptismal name in the 1970s), and Ricky followed a year later. That first September, she was already at the front of a bustling classroom at St. Gabriel School on the Northside. 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.
Other 2024 Milestone Anniversaries
Sister Patricia Brennan
70th Anniversary
Sister Karen Buco
65th Anniversary
Sister Frances Marie Duncan
55th Anniversary
Sister Cecilia (second from left) is shown with classmates at Mount Assisi Academy in 1947.
Sister Cecilia reconnects with Karen Marie Tobias, who she taught at St. Gabriel School in the early 1970s. “Truly, you never know who you will see 50 years later,” Karen says of the impromptu reunion in October 2023.
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 1960s, and then as a guidance counselor in the 1970s. “I would definitely do it all again. I might be a little less strict, but I would do it all again.”
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 recalls it being a complete change of pace from the structured school schedule to which she was accustomed. Her days were less predictable, as 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 last fall’s all-class reunion of Mount Assisi Academy. Unfortunately, she reunites with coworkers and churchgoers at far too many funerals these days.
At 92 herself, she remains as active as possible, coordinating memorial Masses at Mt. Assisi Place and staying connected to all the branches of her sprawling family tree. She still knows her way around a sewing machine and typewriter and sells more than 250 of the Sisters’ spring raffle tickets each year.
“You can only do what your body will allow,” she says. “My body says I’m 92. But in my mind, I’m not 92. I’m right back there having fun with Ricky.”
As the last of her siblings, she now fills the shoes of her beloved mother as the matriarch of a family that runs five generations deep and spans the country. With her “cheat sheet” notebook at her side, she doesn’t miss a birthday, Christening or First Communion. Children once named Joseph and Margaret now have more contemporary names like Juniper and Caden. She also still gets to as many family gatherings as she can, where the youngest Jackos rush to greet “Sister! Sister!”
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.”
Sister Cecilia visits the graves of her sisters — Sisters Julia Jacko and Frances Jacko — in St. Francis Cemetery at Mt. Assisi Place on what would have been Julia’s 100th birthday in 2020.
With Sisters Marian Sgriccia (provincial minister) and Mary Xavier Bomberger (provincial vicar) at her side, Sister Cecilia renews her vows during her 75th Jubilee celebration on July 13.