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Living Holy Child History: Sr. Sheila McNiff ’56, SHCJ
As we celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, we honor the Sisters who have devoted their lives to “Love and Serve” as part of Cornelia Connelly’s educational mission and the Society’s social justice ministries around the world. Mayfield alum and trustee Sr. Sheila McNiff ’56, SHCJ offers a unique window into the history of the Society, and connects the Mayfield of a bygone age to the Mayfield of the present.
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Mayfield has been a part of Sr. Sheila’s life since she was a toddler. The fourth of seven McNiff siblings to attend a Mayfield school in Pasadena, some of Sr. Sheila’s earliest Mayfield memories were marked by a very different international crisis: “When I started school, it was World War II,” Sr. Sheila says. She remembers the global scope and the local impacts, and explained how her mother used to exchange rations with the nuns at Mayfield Junior School. Her mother would give them her flour and sugar coupons, and the nuns would trade their shoe rations. The nuns had less need for new shoes, Sr. Sheila says, while the many McNiff children were constantly outgrowing their Oxfords. “I still have my mother’s ration book,” she admits.
The McNiff family’s World War II ration book
In the 65 years since she graduated from Mayfield, Sr. Sheila has enjoyed an expansive and impressive career as an educator, therapist, counselor and chaplain. She has served as a principal at schools in the U.S. and internationally and has been an active member of Mayfield’s Board of Trustees for more than 17 years—first in the 1970s, before she moved to Africa, and again from 2008 through to today.
This year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she joined fellow alums working on campus to make sure the hybrid reopening of the school was safe for every student. Sr. Sheila has relished the opportunity to get to know this generation of Mayfield students a little better. In late May, she piled into a school bus with a group of Seniors bound for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank to volunteer with them during their final service project before graduation. She has watched as this new crop of Mayfield students finds their own sense of resilience, transforming into new kinds of leaders during this crisis. As the campus undergoes its own transformation, the impressive renovations of our historic Strub Hall home have been bringing up memories of her high school days.
Sr. Sheila recently toured the construction site, where the basement Art Studio is being rebuilt from the ground up for the needs of 21st-century students. The extensive remodeling briefly exposed the original swimming pool underneath. Every single detail, down to the art deco white-andgreen tiles, seemed untouched by the decades—it only lacked water and the diving board! “All of us learned swimming in that pool during physical ed time,” Sr. Sheila says. This perfectly preserved time capsule sparked Sr. Sheila’s nostalgia for the days when she and her sisters used to perform synchronized swimming displays, modeled after the routines of film star Esther Williams, in the indoor pool.
Sr. Sheila was only 17, still a Mayfield student herself, when she felt her calling to religious life. “It was a spiritual experience,” she says. “I had gone with my mom and dad to Mass on a Sunday in November...and when I went to communion I just had this experience of Christ saying, ‘Follow me.’ Well, I don’t think I thought…when I would do it, but I [knew I] would follow Christ.”
With so many of their children educated in Holy Child schools, Sheila’s parents naturally would be expected to be overjoyed by her impulse to join the order. But that was not the case. “My entering the convent was a suffering for my mom,” Sr. Sheila says, adding that her mother “cried every single day” for some time after. Her mother had converted to Catholicism when she married her father, and in her Episcopal tradition, she had only ever imagined her daughters getting married and having children of their own. But “she was a good mom,” who eventually saw the purpose and meaning that the religious order brought into Sr. Sheila’s life.
Sr. Mary Wilfrid Yore, for whom our Mayfield gym is named, was the prefect (principal) of Mayfield at the time, and her reaction to Sheila’s desire to start a religious life was quite different from Sheila’s mother’s: “When I shared [my decision] with Sister Wilfrid, she was thrilled.”
— SR. SHEILA MCNIFF ’56, SHCJ
On September 8, 1956, Sr. Sheila entered the community of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus. And in spite of her mother’s concerns about the way religious life might limit her daughter, Sr. Sheila proved to be an effective educator and lifelong learner. Her voracious curiosity deepened across many disciplines, and her horizons extended far beyond those of a traditional 1950s housewife.
“We were founded to be an educational order, and since Vatican II we’ve tried to meet the wants of the age,” says Sr. Sheila, paraphrasing the Society’s founder, Cornelia Connelly. And Sr. Sheila’s multifaceted, servicedriven life has done just that, touching so many parts of our society and so many corners of the world over the past six decades. She served as principal at several schools, institutions as local as Mayfield Junior School (where she taught Angela Howell ’76, who is now Mayfield Senior School’s Associate Head of School for Strategic Initiatives) and as distant as St. Anne’s Secondary School in Otukpo, Nigeria.
When she returned from Africa in the mid-1980s, she went on to pursue her counseling degree, working with those struggling with drug and alchohol addictions, and later with victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse in Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md. She became Executive Vice President of Saint Luke’s in 1992 and later the Director of Psychological Services at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, Calif. Sr. Sheila has also served as the Assistant Ministry Coordinator for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and, most recently, became a chaplain at USC’s Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, although that part of her ministry was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also devoted years to supporting the work of two Holy Child-sponsored social justice organizations in Southern California, the Los Angeles Ministry Project (LAMP) in South Los Angeles and Casa Cornelia Law Center in San Diego.
To celebrate this 175th year of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, the Sisters have been connecting virtually across the globe from England, France, Italy, West Africa, Nigeria, Chad, and North and South America. “In all the places where we are, we were doing something called ‘retreat in daily life,’ ” says Sr. Sheila. Every day since October 2020, despite COVID-19 restrictions, members of the Society have been “praying with the rest of the world.”
Sr. Sheila volunteers with Senior students at the L.A. Regional Food Bank in May 2021.
Photo courtesy of Melanie Ahn ’21
And, when Sr. Sheila thinks about the future of the Society, she thinks both locally and globally. She quotes Cornelia Connelly, who said: “The whole world is my country and heaven is my home.” St. Anne’s Secondary School, where Sr. Sheila was once principal, is one of 11 Holy Child Schools in Nigeria, a country where many new Holy Child Sisters are committing to religious life. Sr. Sheila expressed deep admiration for these Nigerian nuns, who often aren’t entering straight from high school as she did. She says they are “college educated,” and many of them already have careers as “doctors or nurses or teachers” when they take their vows.
When Sr. Sheila compares our present-day Mayfield to the Mayfield of the past, she sees a lot of loving similarities. She even says current Head of School Kate Morin reminds her of Sr. Wilfrid, especially in her dedication to the school and her generosity to everyone. “Kate, when she greets the students as the car doors open, she’s all ‘dear’ and ‘sweetie,’ and very affectionate with each one. That was so Wilfrid,” she says.
A Mayfield education has always emphasized the “whole child” approach, where mind, body and spirit are all nurtured with energy and joy. But more than anything, Sr. Sheila remembers how Mayfield shaped her deep understanding of faith. “At a very early age, spiritual reality was a big part of my education—the relationship with God was real,” she says. “Mayfield Senior School has given me the faith, love and desire to be part of Christ’s mission to transform the world into a community of compassion and infinite creativity.”
After being part of this year of change at Mayfield, watching both the renovation of Strub Hall and the growth of the students, she seems pleased with what she has observed. “The values are passed on in a different world, and they’re adapted to a different world,” she says. In this way, she thinks that the mission of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus is thriving, and she is “very hopeful about that.”
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A lifelong commitment to ‘Love and Serve’
1944
Enters Mayfield Junior School (then known as Mayfield School)
1946
Professes First Communion
1956
Graduates from Mayfield Senior School
1959
Professes vows as a Sister of the Holy Child Jesus (as Sr. Marie Pacis)
1968
Returns to Mayfield Junior School as a teacher
1971
Becomes Principal of Mayfield Junior School
1973
Appointed to the Mayfield Senior School Board of Trustees
1978
Becomes Principal of St. Anne’s Secondary School in Otukpo, Nigeria
1985
Begins work as an outpatient therapist for Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md.
1992
Named Executive Vice President of Saint Luke Institute
1996
Appointed Director of Psychological Services at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, Calif.
2002
Named Assistant Ministry Coordinator for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
2002
Honored with Cornelian Award as Mayfield’s Alum of the Year
2003
Audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican
2008
Re-appointed as a Mayfield Senior School trustee
2019
Celebrates 60th Jubilee as a Sister of the Holy Child Jesus
At 83, Sr. Sheila remains an active Mayfield alum and trustee, and we were thrilled to have her on campus this spring to help during our transition to hybrid learning.
