Goodbye to a friend
Sister laid to rest in St. Michaels

A crowd fills the small graveyard and the area around the church in St. Michaels during the funeral for Sister Marguerite Bartz Saturday. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

ST. MICHAELS, Ariz. — The body of Sister Marguerite Bartz was laid to rest on Saturday afternoon on a rocky hillside overlooking St. Michael Indian School and overlooking the Navajo Nation where Bartz lived the last decade of her life.

Earlier in the morning, a standing-room-only crowd filled Gallup’s Sacred Heart Cathedral for her funeral Mass. With many of the mourners wearing a variety of handcrafted memorial ribbons, the predominately Native American crowd paid their respects to Bartz, the Catholic sister who was murdered in the early hours of Nov. 1 in what was an apparent burglary at her Navajo, N.M., convent home.

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