Sister Mary Luke Tobin, who died at age 98 on Aug. 24 in Nerinx, Ky., was the only female policymaker from the United States at the Second Vatican Council. She also was an associate of Thomas Merton and a lifelong feminist who advocated ordaining women.
Born Ruth Marie Tobin on May 16, 1908, to Mary McGovern Tobin and William Tobin, she attended Loretto Heights College. She entered the Loretto Community at age 19 and professed her vows as Sister Mary Luke in December 1927.
From 1928 to 1952, she was a teacher and principal at Catholic schools in Colorado, Missouri, Kentucky and Illinois.
In 1952, she was elected to the Loretto Community’s general council and, in 1956, became head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an association of female Catholic leaders.
In that capacity, Tobin was invited to the Second Vatican Council, initially as one of 15 female observers and then as one of three women serving on the policymaking planning commission during the final session from 1964 to 1965.
Between 1958 and 1972, when she served as president of the Loretto Community, she became a great friend of the mystic Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton, who lived in the Abbey of Gethsemani, near the Loretto Kentucky headquarters. Tobin co-founded the International Thomas Merton Society and, in 1979, established in Denver the Thomas Merton Center for Creative Exchange.
From 1972 to about 2004, Tobin threw herself into social-justice advocacy and ecumenical efforts. She co-founded a Buddhist-Christian group in Denver, taught at the Methodist-founded Iliff School of Theology and led social-justice actions in Latin America, Vietnam, El Salvador and Northern Ireland.
“She took issues and causes very seriously, but she didn’t take herself too seriously,” said Loretto Community president Mary Catherine Rabbitt. “She had a sense of joy.”
Toward the end of daily Mass, Tobin routinely leaped from her pew and gamboled before the altar during hymns she found especially compelling. This penchant continued well into her 90s.
“She was actually steadier on her feet dancing than she was walking sometimes,” Rabbitt remarked.
Throughout her life, Tobin advocated expanding the role of women in the male-dominated church hierarchy. Her many honorary degrees included the 1986 U.S. Catholic Award “for furthering the cause of women in the church.”
Though disappointed by the church’s steadfast opposition to female priests, Tobin remained optimistic about the church.
“I trust that Catholic spirituality of the future will always be characterized by openness – to appreciation for all of creation, to ecumenical influences, to Eastern thought, to feminist insights, to the call of the poor, to the mysticism in our tradition,” she wrote in a 1999 U.S. Catholic essay.
Tobin requested memorial contributions to the Loretto Development Office, 300 E. Hampden Ave., Suite 400, Englewood, CO 80113.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
