LACON — A funeral Mass was to be celebrated on Jan. 3 in the chapel of St. Joseph’s Convent here for Sister M. Augustine Kollar, DSF, one of 16 pioneering members of her community who established the American Province of the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi. Burial was to take place in Immaculate Conception Cemetery.

Sister Augustine died on Dec. 26, 2012, at St. Joseph’s Home of Lacon. She was 91.

The daughter of the late Alexander and Filomena (Gabaleova) Kollar, Sister Augustine was born on Jan. 3, 1921, in Spacince, Slovakia. She entered the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi after making a retreat with the community following her second year of college.

“During that time, I was thinking about the convent and after a few days I experienced a feeling that I couldn’t return home,” she said when she celebrated her 70th anniversary of consecrated life last year. “God called me in such a strong way with a deep sense of his love for me that no words can adequately describe it.”

Sister Augustine professed her first vows on Aug. 15, 1942, and within two months was missioned to the United States to help establish the American Province of her community in Lacon. She would go on to assist the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi in opening their first mission at St. Francis Hospital in Mountain View, Mo., and also ministered at Villa Sancta Anna in Cleveland and St. Joseph’s Home of Lacon.

Trained as a registered nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, she had been involved in the ministry of prayer in recent years.

Preceded in death by her parents, five brothers and one sister, Sister Augustine is survived by one brother, Vladimir Kollar; one sister, Bozena Danisova; and nieces and nephews.

Memorials may be made to the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi, 507 N. Prairie St., Lacon, IL 61540.