Sister DeSales Curti has devoted her life to a ministry in pharmacy: fulfilling the prescriptions that patients' bodies need for health and healing. Now retired, she fills a divine prescription; one that doesn't come in a bottle, but is just as desperately needed for the healing of heart and soul: prayer.

Initially trained to be a teacher, Sister DeSales says she enjoyed the students, but felt called to explore other opportunities. The idea to enter the pharmacy field came to her thanks to her sister, who was a pharmacist and FSPA. Sister DeSales answered a call to work in pharmacy in 1955, as a student and pharmacy aide, and her career spanned more than 50 years. Past patients in Wisconsin's Coulee Region may remember her days in the hospital pharmacy or retail pharmacy settings, including the then Skemp Clinic Pharmacy. "I really liked pharmacy, and I'm grateful for the fact that I got to do pharmacy," she says, noting that she especially liked the challenges of the industry, the constant learning that was required as well as the people. "I enjoyed seeing the patients and being able to help them." The career change from teaching also allowed her the chance to work alongside her sister, Mechtilde, in the lone pharmacy in the hospital then known as St. Francis Medical Center (now Mayo Clinic Health System - Franciscan Healthcare).

After retirement from St. Francis in 2006, Sister DeSales volunteered her pharmacy skills at St. Clare Health Mission in La Crosse, a volunteer-run non-profit clinic offering free care to patients who would otherwise fall through the cracks. There she continued in her ministry until 2011, when she entered full retirement.

Now at home at St. Rose Convent in La Crosse, Sister DeSales continues to keep busy with prayer and hospitality. Her hospitality ministry includes working at the St. Rose Convent Gift Shop, which showcases the artistic gifts of FSPA and allows visitors to purchase a memento of their chapel tour. "I really like working in the gift shop here," she says. "In some ways it's somewhat like being in pharmacy: you restock and sell."

Sister DeSales says she also enjoys her ministry of prayer, which includes weekly scheduled hours in the Adoration Chapel. In retirement, she is able to pray for long periods of time in the chapel, which she says she wasn't able to do in the past. "Of course, to give honor to God is always my main intention. But I always have a long list of requests of people who I love, and who have been good to me."

Sister DeSales says there is no better place for her to be right now, than at St. Rose Convent. In honor of this season of hope, she shares a prescription from her heart, "We're here only to get to heaven, and when I think of all these people, I wish for them to get to heaven," she says. "My basic hope would be that everyone in the world knows God and acknowledges God in some way, and gives him praise and worship."