Sister Gloria Ruiz
Current Ministry Location – Monrovia
Gloria Ruiz was born May 6, 1930 in New York City to Clementina (Caballero) Ruiz and Marcial Ruiz. She had one sister: Dolores. Gloria graduated from St. Clare’s Academy in Sinsinawa, WI, in 1948 and obtained a Bachelor of Science in General Science from Fordham University, New York in 1952.
Gloria entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation at the Sisters’ Center in NY in 1953. She professed First Vows March 7, 1955 at the Center and Final Vows March 7, 1961 in Taiwan. Her first assignment was Congregational Service in the Maryknoll Society Seminary kitchen from 1955 to 1956.
1991, Holy Family Medical Ctr, Methuen MA, Clinical Pastoral Education
1998, St. Joseph’s Medical Ctr., Tacoma, WA, Clinical Pastoral Education
Sister Gloria’s Maryknoll life has been mostly in medical and pastoral ministry. She a Diploma in Medical Technology in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Kansas City in 1957 and a Master’s degree in Public Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1971.
Sister Gloria was assigned to Hong Kong in 1958. As a medical technologist she supervised a hospital laboratory for ten years and coordinated a community health center for two years. After decades of working closely with patients, her interest turned to their religious and spiritual care. She studied to become a hospital chaplain in NYU Medical Center, NYC in Clinical Pastoral Education in 1986 and returned to Hong Kong where she served for six years as a pastoral ministry chaplain in the women’s oncology unit of a large government hospital.
Assigned back to the States, Sister Gloria spent several years doing mission education and promotion work for the Maryknoll Sisters in the U.S.
In 1975 she was assigned to Bandung, Indonesia where she again assumed responsibility for a hospital laboratory and a community health program. In 1987 Sister Gloria returned to Hong Kong.
Gloria called herself “a Latin from Manhattan,” yet only after a number of years did her ministry take her to Latin America. From 1999 to 2008, Sister Gloria was in ministry to people living with AIDS in El Salvador, Sister Gloria was in ministry with people living with AIDS. She returned to the U.S. and was assigned to the Sisters’ retirement house in Monrovia, CA.
To Sister Gloria, “The people to whom I minister remind me in that I am a messenger of a loving God.”