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Meet Sister Martina Dirito,
a Sister of St. Joseph of Hamilton

Opera Anyone?

You might find Sister Martina at a performance of Opera Hamilton, sitting quietly in her wheelchair and drinking in the music. She loves all kinds of music and her season ticket to the opera is one of her greatest pleasures. She also loves to relax with a good book but the 72-year-old Sister still spends several days a week working.

Giving 100%

When she first became a nun, in 1951, Sister Martina wanted nothing more than to be a nurse. Instead, she was asked to become a teacher – they were much needed in the schools. She explained to her spiritual director that she was not able to go into nursing and asked for his advice. His response was, “If that’s what you’re being asked to do, then give it 100%.

So she did. When she was diagnosed only three years later with multiple sclerosis, she knew she had made the right decision.

“I couldn’t have worked as a nurse,” she says. “But I was able to teach for 38 years and I’m very grateful that I could keep teaching even though I was in the wheelchair.”

Student Helpers

In fact, her students carried her chair up and down the stairs at St. Mary’s Elementary School where she taught until 1980. When it became too difficult for her to manage the stairs any longer, she moved to Blessed Kateri Tekawitha School, which is all on one level, and taught there until her retirement in 1993.

Teacher’s Helper

But her story doesn’t end there. After retiring you might have thought she would simply rest and enjoy her twin passions of music and reading, but Sister Martina began the following October and continued to volunteer as a teacher’s helper until May of 2003. She taught children to read four days a week.

Important Home Work

That year Sister discovered that there was a need to be filled at the Motherhouse, her home, and preferred to serve there on the switchboard. Sister also is the community contact for Sisters who live outside of the Motherhouse. If there is an immediate need for prayers and at the time that a Sister is called home by God, Sister Martina will telephone each Sister to pass on the information.

Since being in a wheelchair for so many years, Sister Martina has found that Hamilton is her base for holidays. Attending an evening performance at a dinner theatre at Carmen’s Banquet Centre or a at Hamilton Place, Sister Martina is energized by the music, by the performers and by the people around her.

Devoted Life

Sister keeps in contact with her teacher colleagues and often invites fellow teachers both current and retired, over for lunch and a visit. “It’s easier for them to visit here,” she explains. “Most of them have stairs in their homes.”

Sister has never regretted her decision to teach.

“I’ve had a good life and I know it was meant to be,” she says with a glowing smile. “I’m a people person and I’ve spent a lot of my life with people.” She has spent all of her life in devotion to her God, a devotion she sums up succinctly, “I’m very much in love with my God.”

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