An Extraordinary (and Wonderfully Ordinary) Sister Act

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

(Editor’s note: The Boy Monk dedicates its April 2021 blogspace to Utah’s Catholic sisters and nuns.)

Utah’s Catholic religious sisters and nuns did so many extraordinary things while living as just simple and ordinary people. A favorite example is my old friend and teacher, Holy Cross Sister Patricia Ann Thompson.

Sister Pat Ann, as her friends called her, was born in Oxnard, California in 1925, the daughter of citrus growers raising Sunkist products in the Upper Ojai Valley. Her positive school encounters with Holy Cross sisters convinced her to enroll in the Congregation’s Saint Mary of the Wasatch College in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she earned a degree in Spanish in 1951.

In 1945, right in the middle of her college studies, she joined the Sisters of the Holy Cross order based in Notre Dame, Indiana. Now also known by the religious name of Sister M. Catherine Siena, she took her vows in February 1948. She later earned a Master’s degree in Spanish from Stanford University in Palo Alto.

Sister spent 32 years working in education—teaching Spanish, French, English, and Religion. She also served two terms as principal of my Saint Joseph’s High School in Ogden, Utah. I met her there in the mid-1970s and first saw her extraordinary ordinariness.

In my blog (The Boy Monk) and soon-to-be-published book (Monastery Mornings) I write about her extraordinary acts of kindness to me. She helped manage a distressing surprise visit to the school by my father during my parent’s tumultuous divorce. She also made kind efforts to help our family financially by creating a work study program for me (see: Mechanic v. Lawyer).

In the midst of this extraordinary solicitude, she and her fellow Holy Cross sisters who lived in the small A-frame convent behind the school were ordinary dog lovers like most of us. I never had imagined that nuns would have pets, but when a scruffy stray dog started lingering around the convent, they fed him and cleaned him up. My classmate Shawn Alfonsi built him a dog house. The sisters affectionately named him Benji.

Benji likely was a cocker spaniel, schnauzer, and poodle mix just like the famous film dog who bore the same name. After he arrived on the scene, typically the first five minutes of any class Sister Pat Ann taught were all about Benji’s latest antics. The furry nun-mascot was wildly popular at the school and even got his own page in Artisan, the 1977 school yearbook.

One extraordinarily sad day, Sister had to face a much more difficult situation—a family tragedy on campus. A father of three students at the school died in the parking lot after his car collapsed on him as he tried to fix it. Sister had to comfort the stricken family, work with the first responders, and deal with the aftermath of the accident scene.

The next day at school, as I spoke with her about the previous evening’s events, she let down her strong and resilient demeanor and showed some ordinary human emotion. Her eyes welled up as she described the challenge of comforting children who had just witnessed their father’s death, and the sad unpleasant burden of cleaning up.

I attended the University of Notre Dame after high school, likely also influenced by positive experiences with members of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. During these years, Sister Pat Ann occasionally was at the Holy Cross sisters motherhouse convent at nearby Saint Mary’s College. We were able to visit each other from time-to-time.

When I graduated, she followed the ordinary tradition of giving me a gift book, but made the extraordinary gesture of getting the author to sign it. A line in the book, Compassion by Holy Cross priest Father Don McNeill, reminded me of Sister—“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish.”

After her education ministry ended, Sister Pat Ann continued to show compassion, and in extraordinary ways. At age 59, she immersed herself in parish ministries with the Hispanic community, founding the Brother André Center in 1985 for outreach to the poor at Saint Agnes Parish in Los Angeles, California. She also helped many people become citizens of the United States after Congress and President Ronald Reagan enacted immigration reform.

Sister’s convent house was located near South Central LA, close to where the 1992 riots broke out after the Rodney King verdict. A few years after that difficult year, we visited her there to enjoy a very ordinary human pastime—college football. Sister Pat Ann was a big Notre Dame football fan.

We met before the game and she took us to an “authentic” Mexican restaurant, asking how much of my high school Spanish I remembered. We walked together about a mile and a half to the LA Coliseum for the Notre Dame vs. USC game. As we said our goodbyes at the convent afterwards, I glanced over and noticed the VHS movie that the convent residents were in the middle of watching— Sister Act.

Over the years I exchanged letters, emails, and Christmas cards with Sister Pat Ann, but the last time I saw her was in 2008. By then, I was married and had three growing children. My wife and two of our three kids joined me for a summer trip to Chicago—to see the big city and the Cubs—and to the Illinois state capital of Springfield, to tour the Lincoln historic sights.

In between, we spent a few days/nights on the Notre Dame campus, staying in the what is called “Alumni Family Hall”—one of the campus residences opened up for summer stays by alums. During our particular visit, it was at Saint Edward’s Hall. I fell asleep by a window, with an unfettered sightline of the University’s iconic Administration Building, and bathed in the view and glow of the Golden Dome.

The next day we met Sister Pat Ann for lunch and a tour of the Holy Cross Sisters’ lovely convent. As we walked about, Sister pointed out an ancient, nondescript, stooped over, ordinary-looking nun. “That extraordinary woman,” she said, “saved our Order a few years ago when she made the difficult but shrewd decision to buy into Social Security.”

Sister Pat Ann had a few more ordinary and extraordinary moments after our last visit with her. After holding various leadership positions in her congregation, she retired to Saint Mary’s, worked in the library, and converted it to a digital inventory system. She continued to make friends. Her obituary notes, “She knew the language of the heart and always found ways to reach beyond borders with humor, faith and friendship.”

And most extraordinarily, when nearing 90 years old, she travelled to El Salvador in May 2015 for the beatification of Archbishop Óscar Romero, for whom she had a great devotion. Sister also lived to see him canonized as a saint in 2018, shortly before she passed on to Heaven herself at age 95 on February 9, 2021.

I admit that I don’t remember much of the Spanish Sister Patricia Ann taught me, which probably is pretty ordinary for high school students. I will never forget, however, the extraordinary moment when she provided the greatest compliment I ever received in that lovely language.

One day after class I asked her what one of our vocabulary words—“simpatico”—meant. She answered in English, “Likeable, sympathetic, agreeable.” And then she smiled and added, in Spanish, “Como tú.”

*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.