Just after midnight April 15, 2026, as three sisters were praying the Litany of the Saints at her bedside, Sister Mary Thecla Paolini gently breathed her last—as though the Church on earth was already entrusting her to the Church in heaven. Shortly before she slipped into a deeper sleep, she had said something very simple yet deeply characteristic of her: “I have to thank God for so much.”
Sister Mary Thecla entered the Daughters of St. Paul on August 22, 1955. She brought to the community not only her radiant smile and exuberance—she was naturally positive, outgoing, and full of life—but also her enthusiasm for her vocation and for the Pauline mission.
When she told the story of her first visit with the Sisters in Derby, NY, she remembered thinking to herself, “This is the place for me…. In my heart I knew that this was going to be my home forever….”
In her earliest years as a Daughter of St. Paul she walked the streets of New York to spread the Good News (in the late 1950s). For many decades after she made significant contributions to the mission carried out in Pauline Book Centers in New York, Bridgeport, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, San Antonio, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston. In many of the communities she was a much-beloved superior. In her later years she returned to Boston and lent a hand in the shipping department.
To her, it didn’t matter what she was asked to do. She carried it out with the same energy, warmth, and unmistakable joy, greeting everyone with her characteristic wide, sunny smile, that always seemed to make the whole room brighter. She touched almost every part of our province, sowing seeds of warmth in every community, drawing people together, and making even the ordinary moments feel like something to be celebrated.
“Regrets of my life? I have never—thank you, Jesus—turned back at anything, never been tempted to say, ‘This is not for me.’ I said when I entered, ‘I am here,’ and this is it.”
In her words of remembrance, Sister Donna, Provincial Superior, recalled how she had a way of making every person feel noticed and welcomed. “Whether someone was a visitor, an employee, a benefactor, or a sister in the community, she approached them with the same warmth and interest. Her instinct was always friendship.”
Coming from a family with roots in Abruzzi, where food and hospitality were simply part of everyday life, it’s not surprising that she had a very concrete way of showing care: she loved to feed people. She would make minestrone soup or cake and offer it even to friends of the community. And she once declared in an interview that if she hadn’t become a Daughter of St. Paul, she would have opened a food truck—so she could feed people and travel at the same time!
“That was Sister Thecla: open-hearted, concrete…and just a little unexpected,” Sister Donna reflected at the end of her funeral. “In the very Pauline way she loved, she helped give wings to the Gospel—often through simple encounters, conversations, books placed into people’s hands, and friendships that quietly opened hearts to Christ.”
In Los Angeles especially, Sister Thecla had the opportunity to form meaningful friendships with various film and television personalities, seeking to draw them closer to Christ through the Pauline mission. One actor, an Emmy Award winner, shared that Sister Thecla had accompanied him on the journey that led to his full reception into the Catholic Church.
“Do all that you can with a generous heart out of love for God and for the sisters that God puts with you in community. Then only, I think, you will always be happy.”
In the last seven years of her life, Sister Mary Thecla became part of the Boston community, where she could receive care suited to her increasingly fragile health. Even so, she continued to give generously of herself, working full-time in the shipping department. Organized, precise, and efficient, she carefully prepared orders and stocked shelves with creativity and practical sense.
She considered herself an “apostle to the very end.” Until her last illness, she was still helping daily in the shipping department, gathering orders of books to be sent out into the world. It was a quiet apostolate, but she approached it with the same pastoral heart she had always had, sometimes wondering aloud about the people who had ordered the books and what their needs might be.
“The graces are always there. Our spiritual life is so rich. We have so many opportunities to do good — in the book centers, out on the road, on evangelization, wherever God sends us. We have always an opportunity to be apostles.”
As we entrust Sister Thecla to the Lord whom she served so faithfully, we pray confidently that the happiness she shared with us all her life has reached fulfillment in him.
Sister Mary Thecla’s life radiated such warmth and delight, and we remember her with great gratitude: “So, Sister Mary Thecla, with grateful hearts, we thank you. Thank you for the joy you brought into our community, for your generous heart, and for the way you made the Gospel visible simply by the way you lived. Thank you for teaching us how beautiful it is to love and let oneself be loved. Thank you for encouraging us to ‘aim high’ by showing us how high you aimed, until the Master called you to eternal life.”