Sister Regina Pellicore

Location-Cambodia

First mission assignment:  1968-1972 Student

1972-1973, Education, Primary Teacher, EUS, Bronx, NY-St. Joseph’s

Regina Pellicore was born April 24, 1947 in Chicago, IL to Margaret (Driscoll) and Albert P. Pellicore. She had 1 sister, Ruth and 3 brothers: Richard, Raymond and Robert. Regina graduated from Siena High School, in 1965.

Sister Regina Pellicore has certainly proved herself to be resourceful throughout her years as a Maryknoll Sister, whether that has been as a teacher, principal, health educator, community worker with the urban poor, or   as Treasurer of Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic, Inc.

Regina entered the Maryknoll Sisters September 24, 1966 at their Novitiate in Valley Park, MO after pursuing a year of college-level studies at DePaul University in Chicago. She pronounced First Vows June 14, 1959 at the Center in NY and Final Vows November 15, 1975 in Hawaii.

She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Education at Mary Rogers College, Maryknoll, NY, in 1971, then was assigned to teach fifth grade at St. Joseph’s School in the Bronx, NY for one year. In 1973, she was assigned to Kaneohe, HI, where she was a teacher and vice principal at St. Ann’s School from 1973-1984. During that same period she was active in the St. Ann’s Parish CCD program and served on its liturgical committee.

Then, in 1984, she was called back to the Maryknoll Sisters’ Center to serve what would turn out to be her first term as congregational treasurer, a position she would hold for the next eight years. She stayed on for an additional two years to be coordinator of a congregational study.

In 1995, Sister Regina was assigned to Cambodia, where she worked with the Beoung Tum Pun Community Based Health and Education Project. From the beginning the Maryknoll Sisters had worked hand-in-hand with the Beoung Tum Pun parish. In 2008, their new church was the first to be consecrated in Phnom Penh since the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

The Beoung Tum Pun project continued to work with the Church of the Child Jesus to provide day care services in one of the poorest parts of the village, and to facilitate education for families recommended by the Parish Outreach Committee. The community-based health and education project focused on the neediest families in order to provide services for early education; a literacy program instrumental in preparing older children to enter school; and access to low-cost mobile basic health services.

The project included small-scale savings and loans for about thirty families who benefited from improved standards of living through access to no-interest loans. The scholarship program provided school assistance to cover supplies and teachers fees for 225 students in primary school and 70 students in lower and upper secondary school. The project also worked within the government school system which, while extremely challenging, was the best way to improve education for a broader number of students in their village.

“Given our long-term presence in Beoung Tum Pun, the services of our programs continued to meet the needs of the community,” Sister Regina said. “Every child who learned to read, write and think critically about the future of Cambodia took a step in the right direction. We paved the way for those steps.”

Once the foundation for that program had been laid in Cambodia, Sister Regina returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center, where she served as Treasurer from 2011 to 2017. She returned to Cambodia in January 2018.