Douglaston Resident Celebrates 50 Years with Sisters of Charity

For Sister Jean Flannelly, this fall is going to be a period of looking back and moving forward.

The Douglaston resident is celebrating 50 years in the Sisters of Charity as well as taking over as executive director for mission at the Bronx’s College of Mount Saint Vincent.

Flannelly, who grew up in Flushing but currently resides along Douglaston Parkway, said she has lived in the borough for more than three decades, during which she worked at both Douglaston’s Immaculate Conception Center, where she focused on the spiritual growth of young men training to be priests, and Flushing’s St. Andrew Avellino Parish.

“It’s been a good experience,” said Flannelly, who will move with two other sisters in October to Stanfordville, NY. “I grew up here and spent at least 35 years living in the Queens area.”

This fall, she will celebrate her 50th year as a member of the Sisters of Charity, a group founded 200 years ago by Elizabeth Ann Seton that ministers to people in need.

On Sept. 1, Flannelly will begin work as the executive director for mission for Mount Saint Vincent.

“Each institution has a mission or values statement,” she said of her upcoming position. “My understanding is that a large part of my responsibility will be to ensure that the college’s statement is not just on paper, but lived in the hearts and minds of all its faculty, administration, staff and students.”

It will be a reunion, of sorts.

Flannelly graduated from Mount Saint Vincent in 1961 and taught psychology for four years at the college before earning her master’s and PhD in psychology at Fordham University and a master of theological studies at Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

From 1988 to 1991, she was as a professor of psychology and a counselor at the Cathedral College at Douglaston’s Immaculate Conception.

During the past decade-and-a-half, Flannelly worked at Buffalo’s Christ the King Seminary, the Washington Theological Union, and St. Andrew Avellino in Flushing.

She fondly recalled her 12 years of working at the Queens parish.

“It was a very different experience than being in academia,” she said. “In a parish, you never know who is going to come to the door or what you’ll be asked for.”

Flannelly is currently working on a book on the formation of personal identity as well as psychological and spiritual perspectives.