Sister Rita O'Dea passed away peacefully  in the Nursing Home of the Columban Sisters in Magheramore, Wicklow,  Ireland on Monday October 16, 2006.

Funeral Mass was celebrated on Wednesday October 18, 2006  at 11.30 hrs. in the convent chapel at Magheramore, after which she was buried in the convent cemetery.

May she rest in peace.

Sister Rita was the second oldest in a family of six children: two girls and four boys.  She was born in the village of Quin in County Clare where her father before her had been born and grown up.  However, very soon after her birth the family moved to Nenagh, Co Tipperary and later to County Mayo, before eventually returning to Clare.

After completing her secondary education and doing some study at Galway University, Rita began to feel a call to make a significant move in her life, something that might take her to go to the very ends of the earth and that was a call to missionary religious life.  Close by her home was the Motherhouse of the Columban Sisters founded for missionary work in China. She decided to seek admission to this group of sisters and was accepted. In 1948, she made her First Profession of Vows.

Shortly after this, the pattern of Rita’s early “moving around from one place to another” began to be replicated in her religious missionary life.  Her first assignment was to California where the sisters had just opened a school for Mexican children amid the Orange groves south of Los Angeles.  Rita taught there for about ten years.  Then she was asked to return to Ireland and take on the role of superior in the community that served the seminary of the Columban Fathers in Navan, County Meath.  Having completed six years there, she was next assigned to Chicago and later to Los Angeles. Finally, she realized her dream of going to the frontiers of mission – she was assigned to work in Lima, Peru. Rita spent ten years there working as a pastoral care person in a large hospital in the city. This was a time of both satisfaction and suffering for Rita.  On one hand it gave her the opportunity to pour out her life in the service of the most needy while at the same time her sensitive heart was torn by the extent and the depth of the poverty that she encounter everyday all around her. At the end of this time in Peru, Rita returned once more to Los Angeles and there spent the greater part of her retirement years doing what she could to be of service both to her religious sisters and to all whom she met along the journey of life. 

Rita then decided to go to the sisters’ retirement home near Buffalo, New York while she was still active and able to be of service.  In July of this year she took a trip to Ireland but from the very onset it was evident that her physical health was deteriorating.  Within three months of arriving back on her native soil she had made the final journey of her life - back into the arms of her God who so many years previously had called her to leave all in his name and journey to the ends of the earth.

Rita’s Mass and funeral took place in the Motherhouse in Magheramore. The Mass was celebrated by Rita’s bother Donal, a Columban Father who has spent all his life in the Philippines.  In his homily Donal spoke of how Rita’s early life experiences and the values passed on to her by her parents found expression in her willingness to go where she was most needed and do what she could for those around her.  Those who knew Rita well remember her as a very gentle and caring person whose concern was always for the other person, and who despite her quiet personality never hesitated to speak out in the cause of justice and right – and all without fanfare. No doubt, from the other side of eternity she annoyed and embarrassed that all this should be written about her! 

Rita is survived by her brothers Paddy, Donal, Paul and her sister Mary, also a Columban Sister.  Her oldest brother Seamus, a priest of the Diocese of Killaloe, died some years ago.