Sister Maria Charitas

ATLANTA--Sister Maria Charitas Batista, VHM, a member of the cloistered Monastery of the Visitation in Snellville, died on Sunday, Jan. 24, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, who founded the order. She was 95.

She was one of the “foundation stones” of the monastery, 10 Sisters of the Visitation of Holy Mary who came from Toledo, Ohio, in 1954 to establish the contemplative order in Georgia. The monastery was first established on Ponce de Leon Avenue in the Druid Hills section of Atlanta and then relocated to rural Snellville property in 1974.

Born Sept. 4, 1903, in Havana, Cuba, Sister Maria Charitas entered the order in Toledo in 1953 and was the first to arrive at the door of the new foundation on Ponce de Leon Avenue, where she was greeted by then Bishop Francis Hyland.

The youngest of 14 children, she became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. Also fluent in French, she assisted the order in translating its Constitution and traveled for the order when needed as an interpreter.

She was elected superior of the Georgia monastery, known as Maryfield, several times in the late 1960s and in the late 1970s and early 1980s, serving for a total of 12 years.

Sister Maria Charitas died at the monastery where she was in failing health recently. A funeral Mass was celebrated there Jan. 26 by Msgr. Louis Naughton, judicial vicar of the Metropolitan Tribunal, representing Archbishop John F. Donoghue. She was buried in the sisters cemetery on the monastery grounds.