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Sister Mary Ignatia McNally, M.M., a missioner to China and Taiwan, died July 14 at the Maryknoll Residential IV in Ossining. She was 97.
She was assigned to Shanghai, China, in 1936 and served as a nurse at a psychiatric hospital. Two years later, she went to Kwangtung Province where she was involved in an evangelization ministry until Communists forces entered the region in 1949. In 1951, she and six other sisters and four Maryknoll priests were placed under house arrest by the Communist government. She was deported to Hong Kong 10 months later.
She returned to the United States shortly thereafter but went back to Hong Kong in 1953 to work in Kowloon with refugees from the mainland. In 1961 the Maryknoll Sisters opened a new hospital, Our Lady of Maryknoll, in Wong Tai Sin. Sister Mary Ignatia, who had studied hospital administration, was involved in the construction process.
In 1963 she was assigned to Taiwan, where she served 30 for years in medical, pastoral and social ministry, including service among lepers at a government-operated leprosarium. In 1993, she retired to the Maryknoll Sisters community in Monrovia, Calif.
Born in Dover, N.H., she entered the Maryknoll Sisters in 1933 and professed final vows in 1939. She studied nursing at Ossining Hospital.
A Funeral Mass was offered July 19 at the main chapel of the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Ossining. Burial followed in the sisters’ cemetery.
