Sr. Theresa Pasterczyk (Sr. Mary Jan)

List of Deceased Sisters

Date of Death 28/06/2025

 Born: 21 August, 1930 

 Profession: 8 March, 1964

 Died: June 28, 2025                                      

SISTER THERESA’S STORY

Many years, ago when Sr. Theresa began her pastoral ministry in Lurigancho Prison in Lima,

                                                          Peru, she discovered after sometime that inmates often gave nicknames to                                                                staff members.

                                                         Theresa’s nickname was: “Wonder Woman/La Mujer Maravilla!”

However, she previously had to make a long journey before discovering a special call within her missionary vocation—the call to prison ministry. In May of 2023, in honor of her 62 years as a Marist Missionary Sister, Theresa wrote her “Vocation Story”. These are excerpts of her story:

“God writes straight with crooked lines could well describe my vocation. When I turned 30 yrs. old, I knew I wanted to make a decision about my life. Although I enjoyed my social life, cocktails, dancing, I always wanted to meet that special someone to share my life. I knew I didn’t want to spend my life just focusing on myself and my own pleasure. But what? At that point I thought of other options like deciding to join the WAVES or WACS, I don’t remember which? 

So, I went to the Post Office in Lowell and took the IQ test…Well I got a call that I didn’t pass the test; the reason being problem solving. I just guessed at answers…He urged me to go back and take the test again. I did not. So, Divine Providence, had I gone into the service, I doubt I would be a Marist today.

I then sensed a “Quest for God” or as Marists say “intimate Union with God”. I stayed home more and started to reading the Bible daily…I never had much contact with religious other than the Mercy Sisters who came from Portland to Saco to teach CCD once a week until Confirmation.

So once, I did think of becoming a Religious, what Sisters? Then I remembered that when I worked as Nurse’s Aid for a year at St. John’s Hospital in Lowell, I had met the OMI

Chaplain, so I went to visit him. He mentioned the Marist Sisters more than once who did some nurse’s training at St. John’s.  They were Srs. Rose Marie and Siena. I then did recall them and they appealed to me just by their way of being for I knew nothing about them.

Knowing their convent was on Chestnut St. in Lowell, one day I knocked on the door, rang the bell, and was greeted by Sr. Georgiana and met Sr. John Cantius (Mary Hagar).  Postulant days were challenging but I said to myself: “I’ll show them that I can persevere.”

Passion for mission came to me primarily in Peru, thanks to Sr. Beth O’Brien, my mentor. Whether in Lima or Chulucanas, she inspired mission interest in me by her invitation to visit other Congregations and then to move up Ayabaca (a village in the mountains).”

Theresa did pastoral work in various small towns in the Andes, but her missionary journey in time took her to Lima and pastoral prison work. In December of 1983, she was one of the pastoral agents in the chaplaincy at Lurigancho Prison who was taken hostage by a group of inmates who planned to use the hostages as a means of escape. Police and soldiers fired on the vehicle where both the hostages and group of inmates were being transported. There were many deaths and injuries. Theresa was wounded in her arm. In time she returned to the States for both physical and emotional healing. For a time, she worked in a birthing clinic along the Texas/Mexican border in the Rio Grande Valley. On her day off she would cross the border and have an outreach ministry with the street children in El Progreso.

In time she returned to Lima, Peru to continue her prison ministry. After some years she returned to the US. There she kept her passion for mission alive by corresponding with prisoners who were awaiting execution on death row in prisons in America. Years ago, one of the men whose execution was imminent wrote Theresa the following message that she kept.

It reads:

“Greetings Sister; well Just to let you know that in November 14 I should be going to heaven and Play the harp for the Lord. 

I was moved to death watch 14 days ago, and I just found time to drop you a note and to reply to your Cracker Jack letter.  Funny I think of your letters as boxes of that caramel popcorn that comes with a gift inside.

Well sister I leave you for now take care and know that I care in fact you have been one of my most dear friends I have come to know Thanks for being there for me.”

Hugs and Friendship, Roberto.

Surely Theresa must have received many such letters during her years of ministering to people on death row. Her humble quest for “Intimate Union with God” that lead her to the most rejected of human beings truly earned her the name of “Wonder Woman/La Mujer Maravilla”.  May she now dance in fullness of that Union with God.         

Sr. Helen Muller, smsm                                   Sr. Susan Scherkenbach, smsm

Regional Leader.