READING, Pa. — Sister de Lourdes Okoniewski, a member of the Bernardine Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, died Jan. 16 at St. Joseph Villa, Reading, Pa., where she had lived since 2014. She was 92.
Bernadette Okoniewski was a native of Wilmington, the daughter of the late Valentine and Mary (Adamski) Okoniewski, and a member of St. Hedwig Parish. She was a graduate of St. Hedwig School and St. Elizabeth High School. She entered the Bernardine Sisters in 1950, receiving the name Sister de Lourdes. She ministered primarily in elementary and secondary education, serving in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., as well as at St. Mary Magdalen School in Wilmington, where she was a teacher and the principal in the 1980s. She also served as provincial treasurer, councilor and secretary; administrator; and local minister.
Sister de Lourdes remained in active ministry until she was 85. In December 2019, she was featured by the Retirement Fund for Religious and talked about her vocation. She said joining religious life wasn’t so much an attraction as “a gradual formation.”
“We lived four blocks from the parish, and the priest used to stop by the house. Our whole family was wrapped up in the church,” Sister de Lourdes said. “The Felician Sisters taught me in grade school and the Benedictines in high school. My older sisters were always good role models. So it was all those things together that led me to religious life.”
Sister de Lourdes is survived by her sister, Leona Papagno, of Elkton, Md., and many nieces and nephews. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by five brothers and five sisters. One of her sisters, Sister Laetitia, was also a Bernardine Franciscan. They ministered together on more than one occasion, and Sister de Lourdes served as her older sister’s caregiver at St. Joseph Villa. Sister Laetitia died in 2020.
A viewing will be held Jan. 24 at 2 p.m. at St. Joseph Villa, Reading. The Mass of Christian Burial is Jan. 25 at 11 a.m. at Sacred Heart Convent Chapel, Reading, followed by burial in the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters’ Cemetery, Mount Alvernia, also in Reading.
