Workshops and On-Campus Businesses: The Sister of Mercy Who Built Up St John Bosco in Hatfield

• Sister Mary Susan Frazer died in the United States in July 2026
• She first came to Jamaica in 1971 to serve at Alpha
• She led St John Bosco Boys’ Home in Hatfield from 1977
• She built vocational programmes and on-campus businesses there

Sister Mary Susan Frazer, area administrator for the Sisters of Mercy in Jamaica, died in the United States on Friday, July 25, 2026, the Jamaica Observer reported.

Born in Hancock, Michigan, in 1948, she joined the Sisters of Mercy in 1966 after attending McAuley High School in Cincinnati. She was sent to Jamaica in 1971 and served at Alpha Girls’ School and Alpha Boys’ School, before returning to the United States to make her final vows and work as a hospital social worker in Cincinnati.

“Sister Susan still felt a call to serve in Jamaica — a place which became home for her,” the Observer noted. She came back and became executive director of St John Bosco Boys’ Home from 1977, and later of Alpha Girls’ School and Alpha Boys’ School. At St John Bosco Vocational Training Centre in Hatfield, Manchester, she developed vocational training programmes and on-campus businesses, and in recent years shifted residential programmes toward day skills training. In 2016 she became area administrator for the Sisters of Mercy in Jamaica.

She was “well known for the extensive development of the St John Bosco Vocational Training Centre in Hatfield, Manchester, and her work with the Alpha community in Kingston”. Her honours included the Order of Distinction, Officer rank, the Rotary Club of Mandeville’s Paul Harris award, and recognition from the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and the Manchester Cultural Development Commission.

Her legacy is partly written in property. Turning a boys’ home into a vocational training centre with its own businesses is a model of using church-owned land and buildings to generate income and skills at the same time. On-campus enterprises help pay for upkeep, while the training programmes equip young people with practical skills for work.

As religious orders age and shrink, the question of how their properties will be used is becoming urgent across Jamaica. Sister Susan’s approach, adapting buildings to new purposes rather than letting them fall idle, offers a practical example for churches and orders deciding what to do with homes, schools and farms whose original use has changed.