Sister Barbara was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in nearby Scottsville. Her mother, a German emigrant, converted to Catholicism when she married and was very involved in the church. The family regularly attended Mass and all other church-related events.
“When I was a sophomore in high school,” she recalls, “I met the Mission Helpers and participated in their high school forums in Fairport. We got to know each other over the next two years, and by my senior year I knew I was called to religious life.
She joined the Community in 1960; her first ministry was in Brockway, Pennsylvania, where she taught children and led adult methods/doctrine courses.
For many years, her ministry continued in the field of religious education-in Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, Dayton, and at Army and Air Force installations in Germany.
From 1986 to 1998 Sister Barbara was pastoral associate at a parish in Marietta, Georgia, where she visited the sick, planned liturgies, led adult education and carried out other pastoral duties.
She returned to Rochester in 1999 and served as pastoral associate at the “cluster churches” of St. Charles Borromeo and St. Jude the Apostle. Since December of 2015, she has been pastoral associate at the Church of the Resurrection in Fairport, NY, where she first met the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart.
Sister Barbara holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in theology and catechetics. She was elected as an Advisor in the Field of the Mission Helpers in 2016.