We invite readers to send short stories about the ways in which their lives have been personally blessed by the life and work of priests and religious in our diocese.

By Karina Fabian

Sister Pat Toeckes lives her Catholic faith by being a caretaker, whether of children’s minds or parishioners’ hearts.

Sister Pat said she joined the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth in 1958 as a natural result of the friendships she’d developed with several SCLs who had taken her under their wings.

She grew up in Power, Mont., and one year, she felt the need to get more involved in the Church, so she volunteered at the summer Bible school that the Sisters of Charity run.

There she met Sister Maria Edwards and Sister Mary Jane Smith, who invited her to spend a few days with them at Carroll College. “I stayed with them, prayed with them, went to classes with them, and recreated with them. As I got to know more of sisters, I got to know my calling,” she said.

She enjoys being a sister and part of the SCL community. “I have their support even though I don’t live with them. I am very connected to them, especially now by e-mail and telephone. We probably communicate more now than when we were together. There’s also a lot of security – never worry about where you’re going to live or how you’re going to eat, so you can give yourself 100 percent to the ministry.”

Nonetheless, she said that nowadays there are many ways lay people can serve in the same kinds of ministries she does now – and that, she believes, is a good thing.

Sister Pat got her degree in elementary education and taught for 20 years in Billings, before requesting to go back to school and get a theology degree so she could move into pastoral ministry. She has been pastoral minister at Poplar, Livingston and Bozeman, as well as pastoral administrator at Our Lady of Pines in West Yellowstone, where she’s been since 2002.

She considers herself more of a doer than a talker, and pastoral ministry suits her action-oriented personality. She has been active in several ministries, including conducting Children’s Liturgy of the World for the preschoolers – where her early development education comes in handy, she said. However, one of her favorite duties is ministering to the sick, because it’s an opportunity to care for someone on a very personal one-on-one level.

“Pastoral ministry is not so different from teaching,” she noted. “I’m still a caregiver, not to little ones, but to a parish.”


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 21, No. 6, June 17, 2005.