RIP Sr. Alice Gertrude Haslag

The Funeral Mass for Loose Creek native Redemptoristine Sister Alice Gertrude Haslag, 93, was celebrated Feb. 4 at the Redemptoristine Chapel in Liguori, Missouri.

Sr. Alice died Jan. 29 at St. Andrew at Francis Place in Eureka.

She was born in October 1925 in Loose Creek, a daughter of the late Mary (nee Backas) and Charles Haslag.

She entered the Sisters of St. Mary (now known as the Franciscan Sisters of Mary) in St. Louis and made her first profession in June 1948.

Trained as a physical therapist, she ministered in hospitals in St. Louis and other places served by the Sisters of St. Mary.

She earned a doctorate in physiotherapy and taught physiology at St. Louis School of Medicine.

While on a sabbatical renewal program after the Second Vatican Council, she spoke to Redemptorist Father Raymond Miller about following a call to the cloistered, contemplative life and was introduced to the Redemptoristine Nuns.

In October of 1968, she transferred to the Redemptoristine monastery at Liguori and professed solemn vows in 1970.

She used her previous training in the medical field to help the sisters in many ways.

She was a formator, an infirmarian and a seamstress at the Liguori monastery.

Her quiet presence reflected a deep spirit of prayer. She was a woman of great compassion for the oppressed under apartheid in South Africa, where she served for a number of years, for her patients and for her own sisters in the community who were suffering.

Surviving is a sister, Margaret Schaefer of Linn.

From the St. Louis Review, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.