One hundred and thirty eight years ago in a great four story brown stone mansion in lower Manhattan, not far from City Hall and on the spot where the Chrysler Building now stands was born a baby girl named Anne into a wealthy merchant family. Anne was the youngest of four children, her older siblings were three brothers. Her father and mother were members of New York’s first Catholic Church, St. Peter’s, on Barclay Street. Little could they then have imagined that only two blocks away at 154 Greenwich Street, where the Smith family had a lucrative candy business, would be built the world’s tallest buildings, the two World Trade Towers, one hundred years later. On a spring day in 1867, two years after the Civil War ended, the godparents took the baby girl for her Baptism at St. Peter’s. It would be there that she would one day attend elementary school and be taught by the Sisters of Charity. At the age of seventeen she told her millionaire socialite parents that she felt called to be a nun. Anne’s father protested and told her if she did he would never speak to her again and that she would be cut out of his will. 
    On the day that the Sisters came for Anne her mother and brothers kissed her goodbye while her father stayed in his room and in those days it was certainly a goodbye as once you entered the Convent you were seldom permitted to visit home unless it was a funeral or someone was dying. Parents and family were on occasion allowed to visit a nun in a Convent but the nun seldom left even in the teaching orders at that time and that is what it took for Anne to visit home again. Twelve years after she entered her father was now dying and he asked that Anne be allowed to come home to say goodbye for the last time. Her father’s funeral Mass was at St. Peter’s Church and he was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Anne returned to her Convent in upper Manhattan and continued to work as a nun and a nurse ministering to the poor souls that were suffering from tuberculosis and mental disturbances on Blackwell Island now Roosevelt Island in New York City.
    Anne was born in 1867, she entered the Convent in 1884 at the age of seventeen, in 1896 her father died when she was twenty nine. When his will was read out to the shock of all present, Anne, who was not present, was to receive from her father as much as her three brothers received which was five million dollars. Anne, since she took the vow of poverty, willingly gave the five million to the Sisters of Mercy with only one request that they would use it to build orphanages, which they did. The first one built was in Tarrytown.
    Eight years later, Anne herself, like her poor patients, would soon come down with tuberculosis at the young age of thirty eight twenty one years after she entered the Sisters of Mercy. Anne joined her father in the Mystery of God’s Heaven on April 13th, 1905 in a little room at St. Catherine’s Convent on 163rd Street in New York City. Anne was buried in the Sisters of Mercy section of Calvary Cemetery not far from her father. Her three brothers were so moved by Anne’s life of service, sacrifice, suffering, death, and giving up a life of fortune that they wanted to donate money to have something useful and beautiful built to honor her memory. As you probably know Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel was what was built by them and as you also may know her name was Sister Mary Loretta Smith which the marble plaque hanging on the wall in Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel wall has told us for one hundred years. This Tuesday, December 12th the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Chapel.
    Even since St. Peter’s has been worshiping at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel for only eight years, since June 1999, the Chapel has brought in countless blessings. Our school went from an enrollment of 125 students with only three students in the 7th grade and a $300,000 a year subsidy from the parish to now over 200 students and no subsidy needed from the church. Our church enrollment increased from 750 worshiping parishioners at five Masses in 1998 to now 1500, including 300 children, at six Masses, five of which are at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel. Our weekly collection went from $3,000 to now over $8,000, the Cardinal’s Appeal from $8,000 to now $50,000, our Baptisms from ten a year to now nearly 100 a year, our Weddings from only one or none a year for thirty-five years to now about 20 a year, and finally donations from wills nearly zero for many years to now over $750,000 during the last eight years. When we first acquired Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel it took us nine days and nine dumpsters just to clean it, then paint it, then put a heating and air conditioning system in for $90,000, three new parking lots (it had only a muddy space for ten cars) for now 110 cars for $100,000, an underground electric line for $60,000, a water drainage line for the parking lots for $60,000, the furnishing of the sanctuary with a baptismal font for $8,000, a pulpit for $8,000, and sanctuary furniture for $5,000 among other additions. The miraculous thing is that not one cent was taken from any collections to do any of this. It all came from memorial donations for the Chapel’s restoration from many generous souls. But more importantly this 400 seat magnificent Chapel has blessed St. Peter’s Parish finally with a large and consecrated place to say Mass after thirty-five years of saying Mass in a gym. We now have a beautiful Church for Baptisms, Weddings, First Communions, and Confirmations. 
    This Chapel is the reason for the tremendous increase not only in parishioner population and finances but in the increase in the reception of the Sacraments these past eight years. One hundred years ago the Pastor of St. Peter’s, the legendary Monsignor Joseph Sheahan, was also present with Cardinal Farley and the Mayor of Poughkeepsie, George Hine. The organist was Grace Ward and the soloist was William McCourt both of whom have relatives who are presently members of St. Peter’s Parish. Our Lady of the Rosary desired that this Chapel would be kept not only for St. Peter’s Parish but that Her name would be honored and Her Rosary prayed for the Honor and Glory of Her Son, the salvation of souls, for peace in the world and that God’s Will be done.