Whether she was teaching young people about Jesus or telling high-powered benefactors about life in her Salesian institute of women religious, Sister Mary Rinaldi was a “masterful storyteller” who drew in listeners and invited them to be part of the story. 

Her death from brain cancer on Nov. 30 at 81 at her community’s St. Joseph Provincial Center “creates a hole that is huge,” said Sister Katie Flanagan, who has since taken over Sister Mary’s development work for the estimated 120 sisters in the Eastern Province of Salesian Sisters, in the Eastern U.S. and Canada. 

As a religious sister, educator and fundraiser, Sister Mary meant business, said Salesian Father Jim Heuser, who presided at her Dec. 5 Mass of Christian burial in North Haledon, New Jersey. “I want to say she meant business about business, she meant business about persons, and she meant business about God,” he said during her funeral Mass.

That business included an initiative, spearheaded in 1991, close to her heart: “Adopt-A-Sister,” initially a fundraiser to create a retirement convent for elderly members of her New Jersey-based community, the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco. The project matches each donor with a religious sister who in turn commits to praying for them. 

When that clever initiative to raise money for elderly Salesian sisters crossed the desk of journalist Tom Goldstone, a self-proclaimed nonreligious Jew from New York City, he didn’t anticipate that it would lead to a decades-long friendship with a Catholic religious sister. 

“Adopt-a-Sister” caught the attention of Goldstone, then a producer for the ABC News program 20/20. In an interview with the Register, he described his hesitancy in “cold calling” Sister Mary about doing a show segment, but found her “incredibly warm and loving”— as well as fast talking and very matter-of-fact. 

The 20/20 segment aired in 1999, reporting that their retirement convent had been completed, its doors opening earlier that same year. Following the segment, millions of dollars poured in to support the sisters, with new adopters joining the program from around the U.S. Even Goldstone adopted a sister to support the community.

“Once our story aired, they were well on their way to reaching their goal,” said Salesian Sister Katie. 

Although the exact amount raised immediately following the 20/20 segment is not publicly available, one 2006 news article reported that “Adopt-A-Sister" had raised $5 million in the few years following, all thanks to Sister Mary. 

True Daughter of St. John Bosco

Mary Rinaldi was born in Tampa, Florida, on May 13, 1944, the feast day of St. Mary Mazzarello, co-foundress, alongside St. John Bosco, of the women’s branch of the Salesian religious congregation. 

In her eulogy, Salesian provincial superior Sister Colleen Clair shared details about Sister Mary’s life, and the path that led her to serve the youth as a Salesian sister. The third of seven children born to Italian immigrants, Rinaldi grew up in San Antonio, Florida, learning especially from her father about God's love for each person and the joy of religious life.

The Rinaldi family had a long connection with Salesians, as seven of Sister Mary’s uncles and two of her aunts were members of the congregation. Blessed Philip Rinaldi, St. John Bosco’s third successor, who led the institute worldwide and was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1990, was her great uncle. 

According to Sister Katie, Sister Mary knew in third grade she wanted to be a Salesian sister. Her interest was evident by the fact that she asked her father to drive several Salesian sisters from Tampa to her first Communion in San Antonio. 

At 16, Sister Mary entered the Salesian institute, transferring in 1960 to a Salesian High school in New Jersey. She professed her first vows in 1964, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in pedagogy at Seton Hall University, followed by a master’s degree from William Patterson College in early childhood education 

Sister Mary aught first grade in Tampa for six years before being assigned to teach and later direct Camp Auxilium, a camp operated by the Salesian Sisters in Newton, New Jersey. During her 18 years at the camp, she founded a school for 3-to-5-year-olds.

According to Sister Colleen, Sister Mary had a “special rapport with parents and teachers and gift of relating to young people who came for prayer and retreats, strengthened in her gifts of the Holy Spirit and made fruitful ministries.”

Still, in 1989 Sister Mary was asked to make a change in ministry to become her province’s first development director. 

“Though sad to be removed from the classroom and beloved summer camp ministry, she continued to educate with the firm conviction that development was not just about fundraising, but primarily about inviting others into the mission to advance God’s kingdom here on earth,” Sister Colleen shared in her eulogy.

She brought to her new role “incomparable zeal” to advance the sisters’ mission among the young, the formation of new Salesian sisters and care for elderly and infirm sisters,” Father Heuser said.  

For the next 36 years, “this woman, raised in San Antonio, Florida — with all due respect to the relatives — raised millions of dollars many times over as if she were born on Madison Avenue or Wall Street,” he said.

Adopt-A-Sister Continues

Beginning with the goal of supporting the aging members of the Salesian community, “Adopt-A-Sister” is still going to this day, aiding the mission of the Salesian community, which was founded by St. John Bosco to support the Church through the evangelization of young people. Any sister can be adopted, Sister Katie said, but it especially benefits those who are no longer in active ministry to pray and offer comfort and purpose. 

 Besides raising funds (on average $160 per “adoption”) “Adopt-a-Sister” has been a means of evangelization, Sister Katie said. People of different faiths, or no faith, adopt for loved ones and form relationships, sometimes visiting or texting “their sister,” she said.

As much as Sister Mary valued benefactors and friends, however, she placed her fellow sisters first, Sister Katie said. 

When a study that the Eastern Province of Salesian Sisters, conducted by the National Religious Retirement Organization in 2017-2018 determined that the province was about 80% underfunded, Sister Mary set about raising the $25 million needed for retirement needs, Sister Katie said. An office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the NRRO coordinates the annual “Retirement Fund for Religious.”

Sister Mary raised $16 million of that goal, and the sisters have named the endowment fund after her as they seek to raise another $10 million, she said. 

Enduring Friendship

Following Sister Mary’s death, Goldstone, now executive producer of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, reflected their long friendship. 

Over the years, he recalled, she would reach out to him for media advice. “She would call me and say, ‘This outlet wants to do a story about us, what do you think about it?’”

But the “expertise” went both ways, as Sister Mary also shared with him restaurant suggestions and an offer of help from Salesians when he was covering a story at the Vatican.

In 2011, he reached out again to the sisters when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Two years later, he learned he had lymphoma. 

“When my mother got sick and I got sick, I would take any help from anywhere on both of those fronts,” said Goldstone, who was declared after treatment to have “no evidence of disease.”

“Somebody who’s got a direct line to God sounds good to me,” he said. 

Cancer may have ended Sister Mary’s work — with people and fundraising — but she lived out her last five months with a spirit of expectation of her new life ahead with God, in whom she placed her trust, Father Heuser said. 

“She understood [death] was a doorway, not an end, as the passageway into the arms of her Beloved.”

Through the many ups and downs of her life, Sister Mary told her grandniece Anna Anderson, “God’s grace held me tight,” she said. “And if I were asked would I do it again, I would say absolutely because God’s grace followed me and to this day sustains me and my complete giving to him.”