Sister Pat Thomas, OP, a Newark native and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Peace, is celebrating 50 years of consecrated religious life this year. Since 2014, she has been co-director of the Peace Center, a neighborhood outreach in New Orleans that serves children, senior citizens and neighbors in need.
Sister Pat entered the congregation of the Dominican Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs in Columbus in 1969 and professed her first vows on Aug. 8, 1973.
The Newark Catholic High School graduate received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio Dominican College (now Ohio Dominican University) in 1974 and later earned a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Arts degree in pastoral studies from the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis.
Her first ministry was in education. She taught middle-school students at Zanesville St. Thomas Aquinas, Lancaster St. Mary and Columbus Christ the King schools and in Brooklyn at various times in the 1970s and ’80s. She also was an assistant principal in the New York City borough of Queens and a school administrator in Connecticut.
She later served as a residence hall rector at Notre Dame and campus ministry director at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. After completing her studies at the Aquinas Institute in 2008, she joined the RENEW International pastoral services team, training lay leaders for small Christian communities in U.S. dioceses for five years.
In 2014, she was asked to help develop the Peace Center, a ministry of the Dominican Sisters of Peace, a congregation formed by the merger of the Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs and seven other Dominican congregations in 2009.
The center was created after meetings with residents to determine the best way to serve the population of the Gert Town area of New Orleans as they struggled to recover from the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina and systemic poverty.
In New Orleans, she has seen hurricanes, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic. She also has seen young people grow from awkward primary-schoolers to confident high school students and been part of a caring, compassionate community through the Peace Center.
“As Dominicans, we seek ways to educate for peace, seek the truth when the peace is broken and look for solutions to repair the breaks,” she said. “The Peace Center sits in the middle of it all, opens its doors and welcomes the people, young and old, to find some peace for themselves.”