Sister Margaret Joseph Obrovac, a passionate and generous Daughter of St. Paul, was called home to the Father on January 31, 2026, in Boston, following a brief but intense illness. Born in San Francisco on September 3, 1956, she entered the Congregation in Boston in 1973 and professed perpetual vows in 1982. In reflecting on Sister Margaret’s life, Sister Donna Giaimo, provincial superior, wrote: ” ‘With [her] whole being [she] loved [her] maker’ (Sirach 47:8). She loved wholeheartedly—her God, her family, her vocation, her mission, her sisters. She did not withhold love, but poured herself out in friendship and generosity, extending far beyond our community to welcome everyone she met with gracious hospitality. She was especially warm and welcoming toward other members of the Pauline Family, but her heart was so expansive that this love naturally flowed outward to embrace many others.”
Throughout her life, Sister Margaret lived the Pauline vocation of evangelization through the media with zeal and unwavering dedication. She enthusiastically shared the Gospel with passion, and the fire that moved her made her an eloquent witness in every form of apostolate entrusted to her. A born and gifted communicator and storyteller, she served in communities across the United States and Canada, proclaiming the Word of God, forming catechists, and involving the laity by sharing with them the urgent needs of the apostolate. During these years of intense mission, she earned a B.A. in Theology and Philosophy.
In the last article she wrote on the Pauline charism, she reflected: “Our culture will never be transformed from without, but only from within, from you and me choosing to put Jesus at its center, ready to give the reason for the hope that we have (see 1 Pt 3:15). Witnessing to Christ will not mean sporting an externalized Christianity like a badge. However the kingdom takes shape in society, the dynamic for its growth is hidden in our transformation in Christ. This entails turning ourselves over to him, our highest Power, choosing his discipline, allowing ourselves to be ‘discipled’ by the Master. Christification, configuration with Jesus Christ, not only humanizes and unifies persons; it humanizes and unifies societies and cultures.”
A significant chapter of her life unfolded when she had the opportunity to live in Rome while studying Italian. In Perugia, at the University for Foreigners (dedicated to language and cultural studies for international students), she earned her translator’s diploma. Beginning in 2015, Sister Margaret spent a decade serving in the Anglophone Section of the Vatican Secretariat of State. One of her responsibilities was facilitating the search for scholarships for religious and priests sponsored by the Papal Foundation.
Sister Donna, who was also in Rome as a General Councillor during part of this period, recalls: “When I would ask her if I could pick up anything for her from the States after a home visit, she never requested anything for herself. She would invariably ask for something special for the office where the American sisters worked with her at the Vatican: Dunkin’ Donuts coffee! She thoroughly enjoyed being able to please the sisters—and the priests working nearby—in this way. And she would always save a little to share with those of us from our province living in the generalate. I cherish the memory of those little ‘coffee parties’ she organized. She would also request little things for a man experiencing homelessness whom she had befriended near the Vatican. She would often bring him items of comfort she had picked up or purchased from her own allowance, and she went out of her way to respectfully listen to his story and offer sisterly encouragement and support.”
Although her work was at times challenging, she once shared that it was precisely this service to the Church and the Holy Father that made her feel most deeply like a Daughter of St. Paul, living her mission of loving and serving Christ through the Church and the ministry entrusted to her.
Sister Margaret’s dynamic personality also played a key role in organizing a communication seminar, with support from the Papal Foundation, at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome, the first such seminar in its nearly 400-year history.
Sister Margaret loved Italy. She had studied its art and history in depth and gladly accompanied sisters and friends who wished to visit St. Peter’s Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, and the excavations beneath the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata, where Saint Paul is believed to have been imprisoned for three years.
Her love for Saint Paul was something she lived and breathed as those of us who were blessed with her tours of the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata can attest. This had not always been the case. In fact, before her entrance into the Daughters of St. Paul as she discerned her vocation, it was precisely the thought of having to be devoted to the great Apostle that seemed to stand in her way. In an article on Saint Paul earlier this year she recalled: “The vocation question kept nagging, needling, and plaguing me. Finally, in desperation one day, I grabbed the novena and fell to my knees beside my bed: ‘OK, St. Paul, you and I do not get along. So, if you want me to be one of your daughters, you’re going to have to get me to like you.’ There was no thunderbolt, no voice from the sky. But he had gotten his foot in the door and he wasn’t about to leave. Soon afterward,” she wrote, “I joined the congregation, naively thinking that I might be able to ignore its patron, since I loved the sisters.” As she learned to pray to Saint Paul and read his letters, she soon realized: “Whether I was studying, evangelizing, or sharing a meal with my sisters in community, I felt Paul’s companionship and inspiration.” It was a love that she would deepen her entire life and share with others.
In 2024, she received the honor “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice” from Pope Francis and had the joy of being a member of the papal entourage during Pope Francis’ final apostolic journey to Belgium and Luxembourg. Also in the entourage was then-Cardinal Robert F. Prevost. She recalled her impressions of Prevost for an article in the New York Post after his election as pope. She described how they had engaged in a theological conversation and that she had been impressed with his careful listening and nuance.
“If he can bring that to the papacy,” she said, “and I believe he will, we can look at a church that will be more united, if we ourselves are willing to be nuanced, if we are willing to be enlightened by someone else and not just have an echo chamber for our own thoughts. I think that, to me, that’s what it means to be unassuming.”
Sister Margaret had taken on the writing of the first 25 years of the Province’s history. She had conducted extensive research for this project, including work in the Vatican Library. One of her greatest sorrows was not to have been able to finish this work, but she surrendered even this with peace, bowing to the mystery of the sacrifice being asked of her by the Lord.
In the final weeks of her life, events unfolded swiftly yet peacefully. Only days before her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, she inspired the community with her beautiful singing and led the Hour of Adoration for the Solemnity of the Epiphany. When the seriousness of her illness became clear, Sister Margaret faced this final stage of her life with remarkable faith and serenity, entrusting herself completely to God and often repeating the words of Our Lady of Guadalupe: “Am I not here, I who am your Mother?” Surrounded by the care of her sister Frances and her Sisters in the Boston community, Sister Margaret expressed deep gratitude for the love she had received and promised to return it through prayer.
In her words of remembrance, Sister Donna drew a picture of Sister Margaret as a person of joy. “She exuded and easily shared the gift of joy. Highly intelligent, gracious, and witty, she delighted in telling stories that brought laughter from her listeners. Her own enjoyment of others’ stories was generous and exuberant. She was teasable and playful and loved nothing more than being in the midst of her sisters.
“Sr. Margaret was a profoundly human woman of deep faith. Her relationship with Jesus was strong, intimate, and nourished her throughout her life. It was what allowed her to face the devastating news of her cancer diagnosis with remarkable courage and serenity. In every brief conversation we had about her illness, she spoke of the Lord’s nearness. She knew he was leading her on a journey of love and that, ‘no matter what happens, it’s going to be okay.’”
In his homily at her funeral, Bishop Steven J. Lopes who had been her friend for more than 25 years, recounted how Sister Margaret Joseph had spoken with him on Zoom a few days after her diagnosis. He spoke of her as a woman who had found joy in the Gospel, a woman who in her final offering of her suffering for the sanctification of the Congregation, her family, her friends, and for all in need of God’s mercy, had lashed herself to the Tree of Life with her feet firmly beneath her. “What kind of woman calls to tell her friend about a terminal diagnosis and they both wind up laughing hysterically? I’ll tell you… A woman for whom the gospel of Jesus Christ was the endless wellspring out of which she lived. A woman so configured by her Religious profession, so taken by love of her Sisters to delight exquisitely in the small daily absurdities of community life. A woman who signed herself with the mystery of the Cross, so that even the manner of her departure from this world is gift.”
Today, we remember Sister Margaret Joseph with gratitude, imagining her singing the new song of the heavenly Jerusalem—a song she began through a life wholly given to prayer, communication, and the Gospel. May she remember us on our pilgrimage, until we can meet again and enjoy the “tours of heaven” she is even now preparing for us.
