byFather Robert M. O'Grady Pilot Staff
Sister Ann Dominic Roach talks with a student in the library of South Boston Catholic Academy. Courtesy photo
Listen to this article now
She did not like much attention to be paid to herself, preferring to deflect to coworkers with whom she worked and served during almost 75 years of religious life.
She was born in Boston, one of the three children of the late James and Margaret (Hughes) Roach. Madeline and her two brothers, Richard, Torrington, Conn., and the late James, were raised in Lynn's St. Patrick Parish. There, she first met the Dominicans of St. Catharine, Ky., who had formative influence on her and sparked a vocation to religious life. For high school, she went to St. Mary in the next-door parish of the same name.
Following high school graduation in 1948, she entered the Dominican community and was professed in 1950, with the name she would carry to her death at Sansbury Infirmary, St. Catharine, Ky., on Sept. 8, 2024 -- Ann Dominic.
During the next seven and half decades, she would move around the country, serving at St. Vincent Ferrer, Brooklyn; St. Stephen Martyr, Louisville; St. Pius Tenth High School, Lincoln, Neb. (she was among the inaugural faculty of that school). Additional assignments were to North Cambridge Catholic, where she was also principal, and at Marian High School, Framingham, as a faculty member. She was also assigned to St. Agnes and St. Dominic, Memphis, Tenn.
Her leadership gifts were legendary and her wisdom was always sought and seriously and quietly shared.
She was on the staff of the Catholic Schools Office of the archdiocese (1979) before being elected to serve on the government of her congregation in Kentucky (1980-1984). Bernard Cardinal Law appointed her Superintendent of Schools of the archdiocese in 1984, and she served for 13 years. Likely the position for which she is most widely remembered among the schools and priests of the archdiocese.
Those years were years of challenge, with shifting demographics, which often resulted in difficult decisions being made about the future of Catholic schools.
Sister Ann Dominic always had a good team at the school office, drawing on the expertise especially of members of other religious congregations for positions on her team. Hers was a steady and measured approach.
During her tenure as superintendent and in the years following, she was often called upon to help other dioceses, as they studied the situation of Catholic Schools in their dioceses.
In 2003, Father Robert E. Casey appointed her school librarian at Gate of Heaven School and when, in spite of not a little opposition, that school was merged with St. Brigid School and rebranded as South Boston Catholic Academy, he brought Sister Ann Dominic there also as librarian. Father Casey was always effusive in his adulation of Sister Ann Dominic's service and work at the school.
In 2021, Sister Ann Dominic moved to the motherhouse at St. Catharine, Ky., where 70 years before she had gone as a young woman seeking to fulfill her vocation.
Until recently, she enjoyed good health and was in regular communication with her many friends here in the archdiocese and in other parts of the country where she had served.
Earlier this year, she had to move to the Sansbury Care Center at St. Catharine as her health declined rapidly.
She died on Sept. 8 -- the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin -- something one almost imagines she might have arranged.
Sister Ann Dominic's funeral Mass was celebrated at Sansbury Center Chapel, St. Catharine, Ky., on Sept. 12, another Marian Day -- the Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary. Both Marian feasts are significant for her congregation and the whole Dominican Order, which always has special devotion to the Mother of God.
Sister Ann Dominic was buried in the Motherhouse Cemetery, St. Catharine, Ky.