Sister Linda Carol Maser

Sister Linda Carol Maser was born in Urbana, Illinois. She became the oldest of eight, and as they were growing up, they moved to several different cities. She entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 1965 from Anchorage, Alaska, and was received into the novitiate in 1966. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from Fontbonne College in 1970 and a master’s degree in religious education from Loyola University, Chicago in 1979.

Sister Linda taught history and religion in high school in Georgia at Aquinas High School in Augusta (1970-73) and St. Joseph High School in Atlanta (1973-76). Both of these schools were very multicultural. In 1976, she was the religious education coordinator at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Atlanta until 1980 and was a member of the parish leadership team.

The next 13 years, she served as a pastoral assistant/associate at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, the mother church for black Catholics in Atlanta (1980-85), and at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Chicago (1985-86), where she became the parish administrator in 1986 until it became part of two other parishes.

In 1987, she went to St. Francis Xavier Parish in Wilmette, Illinois, and served as pastoral associate and religious education director for six years.

In 1993, Sister Linda moved to Seattle. In 1994, she served as co-director at Providence Hospitality House, which was operated by the Sisters of Providence, similar to a Catholic Worker home. In 1995, she became a housing counselor at a family shelter with the Multi-Service Center of North & East King County (1995-97) and was on call for Broadview Emergency Shelter (1996-98), a shelter for families escaping domestic violence. She was in Continuing Professional Education (CPE) training for the next two years, first at Virginia Mason Hospital and then at the Veterans Administration of Puget Sound.

In 1998, Sister Linda served as an on-call chaplain at Seattle Children’s Medical Center and a case manager for Fremont Public Association’s housing program, Solid Ground. The agency later changed its name to Solid Ground, and its housing program became JourneyHome, where she worked with families experiencing homelessness — part of the agency’s broader mission to undo institutional racism. In 2013, she became supervisor of all case managers in Solid Ground’s housing programs. When funding was lost and the position was eliminated in 2017, Sister Linda transitioned to Regional Access Point (RAP) coordinator at Solid Ground.

Sister Linda has had the grace of serving many different cultures throughout her career. She retired in 2021. Since 2023, she has resided in St. Louis and serves in volunteer ministry.

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