Sister Elaine Francis Desmond, a former Rosedale parochial school principal and Roman Catholic archdiocese educational administrator, died of heart disease Thursday at her order's motherhouse in Aston, Pa. She was 86.
Born Catherine Theresa Desmond in Wilmington, Del., she entered the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia in 1937 and received the name Sister Elaine Francis. She earned a bachelor's degree in education from Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg and a master's degree at the Catholic University of America in Washington.
She began teaching at Northeast Baltimore's Shrine of the Little Flower parochial school in 1939, where she taught a second time from 1959 to 1961. She also taught at St. Katharine of Siena in East Baltimore before being named principal of St. Clement Mary Hofbauer School in Rosedale, where she served from 1971 to 1973. She was the archdiocese's coordinator of urban schools from 1973 to 1977.
