New Formation Director Comes
with Variety of Experiences

October 21, Adrian, Michigan – In her years as an Adrian Dominican Sister, Sister Patricia Leonard, OP, has done everything from teaching elementary school and coaching school sports to working in the Finance Office, serving as a guidance counselor in a high school and working with ex-offenders in Chicago. On August 10, she took on a new ministry: serving the Congregation as the new Director of Formation.

In her new position as Director of Formation, Sister Pat works directly with the women in initial formation: Erin Muldoon, who entered the Congregation as a candidate on October 7; Sister Xiomara Méndez-Hernández, novice; and transfer Sisters Emmy Choge, ASE, and Sharon Bossler, OP. In addition, Sister Pat helps the temporary professed Sisters – Elise García, OP; Ashley Gonzalez, OP; Mary Jones, OP; Patricia Magee, OP; and Jacqueline Stoll, OP – to take the steps necessary for renewal of vows or perpetual profession of vows. When the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate in St. Louis reopens, Sister Pat will serve as the Congregational Formation Representative, the liaison between the Congregation and the Adrian Dominican novices in the novitiate. 

Sister Pat serves on the Formation Team, along with Sister Durstyne Farnan, OP, Director of Vocations; Sister Mary Soher, OP, Vocations Outreach Coordinator; Mary Lach, Director of Associate Life; and Conni Lundy, administrative assistant.

Sister Pat is currently working with Erin to design a candidacy year that will help her to learn about the lives, mission, ministries, history and Constitution of the Adrian Dominican Sisters; to experience ministry; to study theology; and to live in community in the house of formation, Siena House.

The new formation director first met the Adrian Dominicans when she attended St. James School in Miami, and particularly remembers Sister Jeanne Burns, OP, who had been the principal. She entered the Congregation at the age of 18. Her first assignments included teaching at Blessed Sacrament School in Toledo and Most Holy Name of Jesus School in Gulfport, Florida.

With the coming of the open placement system, Sister Pat moved to St. Jude School in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she taught physical education and coached every sport the students played. “It was my first time outside of a classroom,” she said, noting that she was able to develop a different kind of relationship with the children as coach than as a classroom teacher. It was there, Sister Pat said, that she realized how much she enjoyed working with young people.

After a year as the assistant dean of residents for the boarding school at Rosarian Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida, Sister Pat was asked to work in the Congregation’s finance office, a position she held for 10 years. While there, she became familiar with the sisters serving the economically poor and was attracted to that kind of ministry. She was invited to minister at St. Leonard’s House in Chicago, a residential social services program for men who had been in prison. While serving St. Leonard’s as the finance director, Sister Pat earned her degree in social work through the University of Illinois-Chicago. She spent the next five years as director of social service for St. Andrew’s Court, St. Leonard’s newly opened apartment building for men who had lived at St. Leonard’s House.

After recovering from treatment for cancer, Sister Pat worked for about nine months at the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Catholic Schools, then took the opportunity to minister for five years in the Counseling Department at Maria High School in Chicago. In June, 2008, Sister Donna Markham, OP, Prioress of the Congregation, invited her to consider serving as formation director.

Sister Pat has begun a two-year study program, “For Mission,” in which formation directors study the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and learn ways to present them to women and men in initial formation.

In turn, Sister Pat hopes that professed Adrian Dominicans will do their part in bringing more women into the Congregation. “We all need to be involved in formation,” not just members of the Formation Team in Adrian, she said. “We are all representatives of the Congregation.” In fact, she believes that Adrian Dominicans in ministry outside of the Motherhouse – in schools, parishes, and other institutions – have greater opportunities to invite young women to discern life as an Adrian Dominican than the members of the Formation Team do. “They have more direct contact with people,” she noted.