Dr. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz died on May 13, 2012 at age 69 after having received the Holy Sacraments. Ada Maria was born in La Habana, Cuba, on March 22, 1943, the daughter of Josefina Diaz de Isasi and Domingo G. Isasi-Battle (RIP 2005). She lived her youth in Cuba, studying in La Habana where she graduated from Merici Academy in 1960.
She moved to the United States in 1960 with her family, and soon after entered the Ursuline novitiate in Santa Rosa,California. After finishing studies at New Rochelle College, NY, Ada was sent to Lima, Peru by the order to work among the poor in the “barriada de Miramar”. There she became passionate in caring for the dispossessed and building the “kin-dom” of God.
After leaving the convent in 1969, she lived with her family in the United States. Realizing that she had a continued calling to be an educator and a voice for the underprivileged, Ada Maria moved in 1975 to Rochester, New York where she served in two inner city parishes and became involved in the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC).
Ada Maria earned a Masters of Divinity and a Doctorate in Theology from Union Theological Seminary, in New York City in 1990. At Union, she started her lifelong engagement and leadership in the community of Liberation Theologians. Continuing her commitment to women’s issues, she coined the term Mujerista theology to make explicit the Latina voice in Feminist Liberation Theology.
In 1991, Ada Maria became a professor of Ethics and Theology at Drew University, Madison, NJ from where she retired in 2009. Students were very fond of her and described her as someone who was a demanding teacher, fair, honest and passionate. While at Drew University, she co-founded the Hispanic Theological Institute for training of Hispanic Theologians.
She was a prolific writer, completing eight books, and many scholarly articles. Her seminal work was Mujerista Theology: a Theology for the 21st Century.
She is survived and remembered by her mother, sisters, and brother, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, her nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, friends and the community of women she mentored and inspired.
Visiting hours will be held at Caballero-Rivero-Woodlawn, 8200 SW 40th Street, Miami, FL from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. on May 18, 2012. A Mass of the Resurrection will be held at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, 7377 SW 64th Street,Miami, FL at 2:00 p.m. on May 19, 2012; followed by the internment at Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery, 11411 NW 25th St, Miami,FL.
In lieu of flowers, please send contributions to either:
Mary’s Pence Mercy Corps 275 East 4th Street, #707 P.O. Box 2669 St. Paul, MN 55101 Portland, OR 97208 Ada Maria served on the Mary’s Pence board from 1991 to 1994 and was a sister-friend to Yolanda Tarango, CCVI and Rosalie Muschal-Reinhardt, founding board members. The above obituary was written by her family and published in the Miami Herald on May 16, 2012. We are honored and humbled that her family has asked that memorial gifts be sent to Mary’s Pence. Please join us in remembering and celebrating Ada Maria’s life and in praying for her dear friends and family, especially her mother, during this time of grief.
