Remembrance of the Life of Sister Barbara Ann (formerly Sister Mary Bernard) Barbato SL

Sister Barbara Ann (formerly Sister Mary Bernard) Barbato SL died peacefully Aug. 7, 2024, at her home in St. Louis, with her dear housemate Annie Stevens CoL by her side. Barbara Ann had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about 18 months ago and chose to live out the remainder of her life to the fullest. Barbara Ann was 92 and in the 72nd year of her life with Loretto. Please keep her, her family and all her loved ones in your prayers. May she now rest in eternal peace.

A memorial Mass will be celebrated for Barbara Ann at 10 a.m. CT Saturday, Oct. 26, at Nerinx Hall High School, 530 E. Lockwood, Webster Groves. The Rev. Marty Lally CoL will be the celebrant. Burial will be at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. The memorial Mass will be broadcast on Zoom.

Growing up in Texas and Colorado, Barbara Ann made herself at home by exploring her world from an early age.  She and her sister used to play in the dry gulches, creating houses with leaves, and later explore mountain meadows filled with columbine.  Family road trips between Denver and Waco, with stops every 200 miles, took them and their brother to their grandparents’ home and the porch swing by the fig trees where fruit seemed always ripe for eating.

Her father, an Army surgeon who became a psychiatrist, encouraged her to read widely, buying books from travelling salesmen, and Barbara Ann recalls sitting on the floor and taking books from the lowest shelf.  “I somehow learned that the letters formed words, and the sentences began to emerge.  No one taught me, I just figured out how to read.”

An early photo of Barbara Ann shows her sitting at her little desk on the porch, but she was always moving around outside. Her mother taught her to climb trees (always over grass instead of pavement), even how to build a tree house.  As a student at Cathedral High in Denver, Barbara remembers one of her favorite places to study was sitting in a tree next to campus. 

She loved to read American history and stories of saints and Biblical heroes; she said, “In second grade, I knew I would be a nun.”  In San Antonio, her family attended Mass at the old mission, and in Denver the Army chapel at Fitzsimons was shared by Catholics and Protestants alike during World War II. Her first Loretto teachers at Blessed Sacrament made a strong impression on her, followed by a student teacher from Loretto Heights who taught debate at Cathedral High. “Our debate team went to Cheyenne for a weekend meet, but there was a problem when we arrived at the hotel.  Our teacher came to the bus and told us we couldn’t stay because my debate partner was African American.  We all immediately said, ‘Then let’s go home.’ This was 1950 and I knew – we all knew – that we had to stand against prejudice and injustice.”

Barbara finished high school after three years, then went to Loretto Heights to major in dietetics.  In her second year, several of her friends were leaving for the novitiate and she asked her mother if she could join them.  “We were riding in the car and my mother pulled to the side of the road, looked straight at me, and said, ‘It would mean a lot to your father if you finished college first.’ So, I went back to campus and asked Sister Florence Wolff how I could speed up my graduation.  She suggested changing to a history major, since I could complete all the required classes in a single year.  So that’s how I graduated at 20 and went off to Loretto, stopping in St. Louis on the way to watch the Cubs play the Cardinals.”

Her seven decades of life in Loretto were filled with students, from fourth graders to high school to college level.  She also learned from the Community that some of the most important lessons were outside the classroom.  “At St. Ann’s, Normandy, the railroad track ran nearby, and often a drifter would knock at the back door – and always was given milk and a sandwich.  In Mobile on Saturdays, some of us drove to the turpentine woods and started playing catch with a ball, watching to see the children of poor sharecroppers work up courage to come play and talk with us.”

While studying for her doctorate in modern European history at St. Louis University, she taught at Nerinx Hall and engaged her students in real-world projects. “My history class would research topics, my English class would write up the research, and my typing class would type the manuscript and give it back to the others to edit. We also helped organize the Loretto Magazine’s subscription list when Sister Jean Carmel was resurrecting the publication in the late 1950s.”  She also taught American history to novitiate classes in the early 1960s, making sure that her bulletin boards were filled with newspaper clippings of current events. “I put up new clippings every day until I got the message that I was keeping them so busy that they had no opportunity to ‘practice virtue’ – so I changed the board every other day.”

A longtime professor of history at Webster University, she developed innovative methods which former students still remember.  “I inherited a Geography class required for teachers, and all my students were educators in the public schools.  We did an inventory of a local school library to see how history was presented, with an eye to women and cultural diversity.  At the end of the semester, I used grant money to purchase needed books, and we donated them to the school library.” 

With growing concern for civil rights and women’s rights, she and Professor Alice Cochran CoL called attention to faculty salary inequities that were then addressed.  Faculty women also rallied to provide young married international students with baby car seats and other needed items.  Her awareness of the mass migration of peoples internationally led her to help create Webster’s program in refugee studies.  “I’m a systems thinker, so when I saw the pattern had a hole, I always tried to fill the gap.” 

Throughout her life, Barbara Ann lived the Loretto charism of “loving service” among Community members, neighbors and through Red Cross volunteering in retirement.  She passed peacefully at home nine days before the Feast of Mary’s Assumption.