Hospital Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis

Sister M. Martiniana Willenborg

✝ Thursday, March 2nd 2023

The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. (1 Thess. 5,24)

The faithful God who called her 68 years ago completed the life of our Sister M. Martiniana on March 2, 2023. Sister M. Martiniana was born on January 1, 1934. She entered our religious community on January 28, 1955, and made her First Profession on October 28, 1957.

Sister M. Martiniana was a true Oldenburger, who was born in Molbergen and grew up on the farm of the Willenborg family. She remained warmly attached to the family until the end.

In Molbergen she met the Mauritz Franciscan Sisters and joined them at the age of 21. A few years after passing her nursing exams in Münster, she became a medical-technical assistant. From 1966 to 1993, she worked in the laboratory and in the X-ray department of the St. Benedictus Hospital in Recke. She was then transferred to Kroge, where she helped the nurses in many areas. In Düsseldorf, she trained as a medical chiropodist and was then able to help many sisters whose feet had been damaged by long periods of walking in the hospital. She also completed courses in accompanying seriously ill and dying people, in order to assist her fellow Sisters in their illness and in the hour of death. Sister M. Martiniana was gifted with many talents and was active wherever she was needed. Her prayer life was also very important to her. She was often seen praying at the church in Kroge, and she gladly kept contact with the parishioners and the people from the neighborhood, to whom she was warmly attached.

Just as she sat at the deathbeds of many of her fellow sisters, her fellow sisters accompanied her on her way to the God whom she followed in her vocation and who will now complete her life, as we read in 1 Thessalonians.

With gratitude we bid farewell to Sister M. Martiniana. In prayer and in the celebration of the Eucharist, we pray for her and remain united to her as Sisters.

We will celebrate the Resurrection Mass for Sister M. Martiniana on Friday, March 10, 2023 at 2:00 p.m. in the convent church in Kroge. Afterwards we will accompany her to her final resting place at the cemetery in Kroge.