SNELLVILLE--Sister Mary Bernadette Wolpert, VHM, a member of the Sisters of the Visitation cloistered community in Snellville, died Jan. 6 at the age of 86.

Her funeral Mass was celebrated at 2 p.m. Jan. 9 in the community chapel with Father Michael Hogan, chaplain to the sisters, as principal celebrant and eight other priests, including Dom Bernard Johnson, OCSO, abbot of the Trappist monastery in Conyers, as concelebrants. Sister Wolpert was buried in the cemetery on the grounds where other sisters of the Georgia foundation are laid to rest.

“Her whole life was a life of service, always wanting to do everything she could for the sisters,” according to the major superior of the community, Sister Immaculata Collin, VHM. Sister Wolpert served first as infirmarian and then for many years as cook for the community. In recent years she continued to serve the community, although no longer as cook. Her health declined and she coped with illness uncomplainingly, Sister Collin said, remaining active until two days before her death.

Born in Atlanta she entered the active order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet as a young woman and taught in Catholic Schools across Georgia for 30 years. Then she asked to join the cloistered order of the Sisters of the Visitation, when the order established a foundation in Georgia. She professed her vows as a Visitation nun on Jan. 29, 1958, giving over 35 years to this rule of life.

Sister Wolpert died on First Friday, a day traditionally honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a devotion spread by one of the Visitation order’s great saints, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who received revelations in the 1600s concerning Jesus’ great love for humankind, expressed in the burning symbol of the Sacred Heart.