Sister M. Dubricia Roling

✝ Thursday, February 2nd 2023

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 Now you Lord let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen salvation.

                                                                                                                     (From the evening prayer of the Church)

On the evening of the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, on February 2, 2023,  the  kind and loving God took to Himself, our fellow sister, Sister M. Dubricia Roling. Sister M. Dubricia was born on April 17, 1929. She entered our religious community on April 7, 1951. She made her first profession on May 4, 1953.

 

Sister M. Dubricia was born in Holtwick, today Rosendahl, into a Catholic family. Sister M. Dubricia followed her older sister, our fellow sister M. Gundelindis, into the convent a year later and became a Franciscan nun of Mauritz.

 

After her nursing training, she became a Medical Technical Assistant (MTA) and worked for 10 years in the radiology department of the Marienhospital in Bottrop. She had to give up this service due to illness and was the first of our Sisters to complete the three-year training as a hospital pastoral counselor at the Institute for Diaconate and Pastoral Services in the Diocese of Münster. She then became the first Catholic chaplain at the Evangelical Hospital in Münster, a pioneer Franciscan in pastoral ministry. After about ten years, she had to give up this service on behalf of the diocese due to health reasons and, as far as her strength allowed, she worked pastorally from our Mother House at St. Francis Hospital and St. Heriburg House. In 2002, she moved to St. Heriburg House, as she needed more personal help. Until a few years ago, she remained pastorally active here, organizing days of reflection, spiritual lectures and Bible studies for her fellow sisters, who gladly accepted them. Most recently she did this together with the pastor of the house, Father Deuerling.

 

Almost the entire religious life of Sister M. Dubricia was marked by her physical illnesses, which set her narrow limits. Her spirit remained alert and interested, especially in the questions of religious life and the Church. She gladly shared her faith with people and convincingly carried out her duties as a pastoral minister. She helped many people with this, even in their hour of death. As a devotee of St. Joseph, she liked to call on him as the patron saint of the dying. A fellow sister was with her in her hour of death and accompanied her out of earthly life as Sister M. Dubricia had done before with many dying people.

 

We gratefully bid farewell to Sister M. Dubricia. We remember her in prayer and in the celebration of the Eucharist and remain united to her as sisters.

 

On Tuesday, February 7, 2023, we will celebrate the Mass of Resurrection for Sister M. Dubricia at 2:00 p.m. in the Mother House Church and accompany her to her final resting place in the Sisters' Cemetery