Sister Mary Joachim Boland

Sister Mary Joachim Boland (1919-2005) was born on August 10, 1919 in Boston, Massachusetts, the fourth of five children. As a child she contracted polio and her mother died when she was fifteen years old. Three years later, on September 8, 1937, she entered the Catholic religious community of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston. Her first assignment was teaching elementary school at St. Columbkille in Brighton, Massachusetts.

In 1943 she was reassigned to teach at St. Catherine School. Shortly after this her youngest brother, Thomas, returned from the military and drowned.

In 1954 she joined her community’s newest mission in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, to teach junior high school at St. Rose School. There she fell in love with the people and places of New Mexico. This “love affair” with New Mexico continued for 52 years.

In the 1970’s she returned to Boston and earned a Master’s Degree in counseling from Boston College, served as a guidance counselor in Roxbury Catholic Schools in Boston, and served as the Personnel Director for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston. In 1979 she returned to New Mexico and worked as a counselor with Catholic Social Services. In 1984? she started, along with Sister of Mercy Natalie Rossi, an intensive inmate self-help program at the Bernalillo County Detention Center, Comienzos.

Over the next sixteen? years, Sister Mary Jo helped thousands of inmates get a new start on new life by teaching them how to improve their social, parenting, and communication skills, deal with their anger without violence, manage stress, cope with loss, and boost their self-esteem.

During this time she was also a faithful volunteer at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, where she was instrumental in starting Franciscan Father Richard Rohr in a fourteen year jail ministry.

She retired from jail ministry and the Comienzos program in 2000 and returned to Boston in 2006? She died on April 27, 2006 in Framingham, Massachusetts at the age of 86.

She is fondly remembered for her deep compassion, strong will, playfulness, humble willingness to serve, and commitment to justice.   

* source: Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners resolution in honor of Sister Mary Joachim Boland, August, 2006.