A funeral Mass for Sister Joanne (Mary Gregory) Seiser, SNDdeN, was celebrated Aug. 1 at the St. Julie Chapel in the Mount Notre Dame convent in Cincinnati. Sister Joanne died July 28 at Mount Notre Dame. She was 89 and had been a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur for 72 years.

Born in Muncie, Ind., and raised in Dayton, Ohio, Sister Joanne entered at Mount Notre Dame in 1945. In the Archdiocese of St. Louis, she served as director of ministry for the St. Louis-based Franciscan Province of the Sacred Heart from 1988 to 2000. In addition, she served in Ohio and Illinois as an educator/pastoral minister. She taught at the elementary, high school and college levels. She also developed lay ministry, GED, English as a Second Language and work skills programs, visited the Taize Community in France along with student delegates to the World Council of Youth and journeyed to Peru as part of a cultural and theological exchange program sponsored by Maryknoll.

In 2015, Sister Joanne moved to the Mount Notre Dame Health Center. She is survived by a sister, Mary Ellen Pfeiffer.