Teresa McCallion with the statue of Regina Cleri, June 2014. Pilot file photo/Scott Wahle
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BRAINTREE -- Every morning, Teresa McCallion would leave her Wakefield home and walk a quarter mile to the bus stop. She would then take the bus to Malden, where she would get on an Orange Line train to North Station. Once she got there, she would walk almost a mile to Regina Cleri, where she worked as a receptionist. At the end of each day, she would walk back to North Station and go by train, bus, and foot back to Wakefield. She did this until she was in her 80s.
"To her, Regina Cleri was her life," Regina Cleri Executive Director Stephen Gust told The Pilot in a May 24 interview. "She was an extraordinary woman who gave her life to Regina Cleri."
McCallion worked at Regina Cleri from 1967 to 2016, making her the longest-serving employee in the home's history. She died in January 2023 at the age of 92. While at McCallion's wake, her cousin Mary Medeiros saw several unfamiliar faces. They turned out to be people that McCallion had befriended while riding the bus.
"She believed in God very much," Medeiros told The Pilot in a May 22 interview. "She was a person who was very faithful to whatever she was doing... She tried to help Regina Cleri very much."
In May 2023, Bishop Mark O'Connell rededicated her former office as the Teresa McCallion Rose Room, referencing her love of roses (and the office's rose-colored furniture). McCallion worked in that room for almost 30 years. She asked Gust to put a statue of Regina Cleri behind her desk, and he did because he "had such respect for her." He gave her a statue that Richard Cardinal Cushing had purchased while in Rome.
"She was an amazing example for a new employee coming in," Gust said.
Former Regina Cleri Director of Nursing Laurine Kohler told The Pilot that Bishop O'Connell once called McCallion "the heart and soul of Regina Cleri."
"It's hard to put in words what an incredible person she was," said Kohler, who worked with McCallion for 11 years. "She was very, very dedicated to all priests... She just felt complete love for them and gratitude, and anything she could do to help them, she did."
Born and raised in South Boston, McCallion was a painter in her younger years. Her favorite subject was the ocean. Along with being a receptionist, McCallion was a lector and extraordinary minister of Holy Communion during Masses in the Regina Cleri chapel. When a priest was sick, she stayed by his side. She loved to listen to the priests, talk to them, and receive spiritual guidance from them. Medeiros only visited Regina Cleri once in her life, but McCallion would talk about her job there frequently.
"She was trying to be helpful," Medeiros said. "Maybe for (priests') mental health, maybe for their spiritual health, but she was very, very good at that."
During the blizzard of 1978, McCallion lived at Regina Cleri for two weeks, covering for the nurses and volunteers who couldn't make it there.
"She was extremely kind, and she believed in kindness to everyone," Kohler said. "She was a true Christian."
Gust said that McCallion wasn't a sister, but due to her service and humility, she was treated like one.
"This was a vocation for her," Gust said. "She really made her life's work here at Regina Cleri."
McCallion's openness was not reserved just for the priests. If her coworkers needed help paying bills, she would pitch in -- if they were friendly and worked hard.
"She was no pansy in terms of if you weren't doing your job," Kohler said.
Kohler described McCallion as her "best friend," and tried to live by her example.
"She is exactly what Jesus would want a person to be," she said. "In her presence, you were around holiness."
McCallion had gotten to know Cardinal Cushing through his visits to Regina Cleri. She promised him that she would work at Regina Cleri for her entire life. Even when her legs grew swollen and she could no longer walk, she wanted to continue working.
"She told me that she wanted to be there until the time that God didn't want her to be there," Medeiros remembered.
However, in 2016 her health forced her to retire after 49 years of service.
"But I promised Cardinal Cushing that I would stay here until I died," she told Gust when it came time for her to retire.
"Let me deal with Cardinal Cushing when I get to the gates of Heaven," Gust replied.