Mother Olga Yaqob

Mother Olga Yaqob is known as "The Mother Theresa of Baghdad" and Boston University's "Blue Lightning." She is the foundress and mother servant of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth.

1966	Born in Iraq in an Assyrian Catholic family.
1980	Beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in September. Olga felt the call to become a Roman Catholic nun at age 14. Ministered to prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison (Or was this after the Gulf War?).
	Attended Baghdad University.
	Olga and her family were separated; many died of starvation and thirst.
1988	End of the Iran-Iraq War.
1997	Family fled from Iraq. Olga remained in Baghdad against their wishes. She became "enamored of Roman Catholic practice while attending weekday Mass in Iraq."
	"A lay service movement she started called Love Your Neighbor caught the attention of her local bishop, who asked her to found a religious community for women called the Missionaries of the Virgin Mary. As the founder of the order, Yaqob became the first nun in the Assyrian Church of the East in over 700 years, but because she personally observed Roman Catholic practices such as attending daily Mass and praying the rosary, the bishop eventually took the order from her."
2001	"She accepted a scholarship from the Jesuits to pursue a master’s in ministry and spirituality at Boston College in 2001. She went to Boston University to learn English."
2005	"In December 2005, Yaqob finally realized her vocation in a ceremony at Marsh Chapel, where she professed her vows as a Roman Catholic nun and urban hermit. ... 'I went through a lot in my faith journey and as I tell everyone, it took 25 years of my life, but it was worth it.'"
	"At BU, ... she founded a counseling program for women students called Nazareth House. The program provides support for women facing issues ranging from homesickness to a family death."
2010	"Sister Olga Yaqob Named University Chaplain for BU’s Catholics."
	"As a professed hermit, she spends Saturdays alone, in contemplative prayer."

2 January 2007

"Journey of Faith."

The Iran-Iraq war took place when she was a teenager. Wikipedia, "Iran-Iraq War": September 1980 to August 1988]

When she was 14 years old (~1980), Yaqob says, she received the call to become a Roman Catholic nun, but her family — who belonged to the Assyrian Church of the East, one of several Catholic churches with its own patriarch — forbade her to convert. Her father sent her to Baghdad University hoping she’d meet a man and fall in love. He even attempted to arrange a marriage for her in London, but she refused to follow through.

Spent seven years ministering to prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison.

When her family fled Iraq in 1997 to escape the war, Yaqob remained in Baghdad against their wishes — she felt called to dedicate her life to God by serving those around her.

A lay service movement she started called Love Your Neighbor caught the attention of her local bishop, who asked her to found a religious community for women called the Missionaries of the Virgin Mary. As the founder of the order, Yaqob became the first nun in the Assyrian Church of the East in over 700 years, but because she personally observed Roman Catholic practices such as attending daily Mass and praying the rosary, the bishop eventually took the order from her.

She accepted a scholarship from the Jesuits to pursue a master’s in ministry and spirituality at Boston College in 2001. She went to BU to learn English.

In December 2005, Yaqob finally realized her vocation in a ceremony at Marsh Chapel, where she professed her vows as a Roman Catholic nun and urban hermit.

"I went through a lot in my faith journey and as I tell everyone, it took 25 years of my life, but it was worth it."

14 years old + 25 years = age 39 = 1966 + 39 = 2005

BUT http://www.cathnewsusa.com/2011/06/iraqi-woman-founds-new-order-of-sisters-in-boston/ says she was 44 in 2011, which suggests birth year of 1967 ...

10 September 2010

"Sister Olga Yaqob Named University Chaplain for BU’s Catholics."

Age 44, so born circa 1966.

Fled to Baghdad to avoid a marriage arranged for her by her parents to a man in London.

Also known as "Blue Lightning," she sleeps just five hours a night.

A teenager, alienated from her family over unbridgeable religious differences, grows up to be a lay minister and then a nun in war- and Saddam-ravaged Iraq. She feeds the needy, cares for prisoners, even claws graves for the dead with her hands.

As a professed hermit, she spends Saturdays alone, in contemplative prayer.

At BU, she resides on Ivy Street, where she founded a counseling program for women students called Nazareth House. The program provides support for women facing issues ranging from homesickness to a family death.

Made her final vows on the BU campus in 2005 (what order?).

22 April 2011

"Catholic Chaplain Sister Olga Leaving BU."

Yaqob arrived in the United States in 2001 unable to speak a word of English. She learned the language at BU’s Center for English Language and Orientation Programs. Iraq-bred, she left the Assyrian Church, to which her parents were devoted, after becoming enamored of Roman Catholic practice while attending weekday Mass in Iraq. She had worked as a lay minister there, helping the needy during the economically and politically devastating aftermath of the first Gulf War. Jesuits arranged for her to come to Boston College for graduate education, after which she began her BU ministry.

Yaqob came to BU as a part-time worker at the Catholic Center in 2002 and has been full-time for six years. She was named Catholic chaplain just last summer by the archdiocese, the second woman to hold the position. In her letter, describing the University’s lasting influence on her, she noted that she made her final vows as a nun in 2005 at Marsh Chapel, and became a U.S. citizen in 2007 because "God has given me many American children at BU, and it was time for their mother to be an American, too."

Years ago, while still in her native Iraq, Sister Olga Yaqob founded the first new order of nuns in the Assyrian Church, [one of the earliest schismatic Churches, led by] its own patriarch, in seven centuries. Life has now circled back for BU’s Roman Catholic chaplain, who will leave the University at the end of June to start a new religious order for women in Boston.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley first approached Yaqob about founding a new religious order three years ago, she says, adding that she prayed about and pondered his invitation while keeping in regular touch with him.

Hers is one of two new orders of nuns trying to form in Boston, according to Sister Marian Batho, the archdiocesan delegate for religious. The last order of nuns established in Boston was the Poor Sisters of Jesus Crucified, founded in 1945, she says.

Rather than a specific mission such as education or tending the poor, she says her new order will seek to do everyday tasks with holiness, modeled on the way the Virgin Mary reached out to help people such as her cousin Elizabeth in Luke’s Gospel.

-- Just recently changed from Sister Jaqob to Mother Yaqob?

25 October 2004

"Sister Olga Yaqob found her calling to serve God amid the rubble in Iraq."

The 37-year-old left her parents' home in Kirkuk, Iraq, after the first Gulf War to work and live among the poor in Baghdad. After arriving in the Iraqi capital, she traded her regular clothes for a blue habit and white veil in honor of her protector, the Virgin Mary, and began to visit Abu Ghraib prison to pray with the inmates.

Yaqob was 13 when the eight-year-long war with Iran began.

After the war, with the family reunited in Kirkuk, Yaqob's father decided to move everyone to Jordan, but she pleaded to stay. She wanted to become a nun and help both Muslims and Christians in the country where Catholics, whose roots stretch back to the early church, make up less than 3 percent of the population.

"Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart."

In 1993, as a young lay woman, she started a lay movement called Love Your Neighbor. She invited young men and women from Christine and Muslim communities to be part of this community to serve the needs of the poor in Iraq.

In 1995 she established the order of Marth Maryam Sisters- Missionaries of the Virgin Mary, the first order for Religious Sisters in the Assyrian Church of the East in 700 years.

She has a BS in Biology and Hematology from Arbil University in Iraq and a MA in Philosophy and Theology from Babylon College that is affiliated with the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. She also has a Diploma in Islamic Studies and a certificate in Theology of The Body.

She came to the United States in 2001 for her studies where she received her master degree in Pastoral Ministry from Boston College. From 2002- July 2011 she was involved in the campus ministry of the Catholic Center at Boston University. From July 2010- July 2011 she was named the University Chaplain for the Roman Catholic community at Boston University.

She was received into the Roman Catholic Church on September 8th 2005, in the Archdiocese of Boston. Cardinal Séan Patrick O’Malley, OFM. Cap. received her perpetual vows on December 8th 2005.

In April 2008, she received the award of the Religious Sister of the Year at the 2008 Boston Catholic Women’s Conference. In April 2010, she received ‘Saint Paul the Apostle Award’ from the office of the New Evangelization of Youth and Young Adults of the Archdiocese of Boston. In May 19, 2011, she received an honorary Scarlet Key Award from Boston University.

In summer 2009, Cardinal O’Malley gave her the permission to start a new apostolate on the Boston University campus called the Nazareth House. It was a house of prayer and discernment for young women. In April, 2011, Cardinal Séan Patrick O’Malley, entrusted to her the mission of establishing a new religious community of sisters in the Archdiocese of Boston, Daughters of Mary of Nazareth.

Daughters of Mary of Nazareth

St. Joseph Convent
509 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467

Daughters of Mary of Nazareth website.

Daughters of Mary of Nazareth is a Roman Catholic religious community of women. We are a private association of the faithful in the Archdiocese of Boston founded in 2011 by Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart.

Our spirituality is guided by Blessed Charles de Foucauld’s spirituality of Nazareth. As he lived his life imitating the example of Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, so are we called to live in a daily intimacy with Jesus. Starting our daily life with Jesus in prayer and adoration will transform us so that we may become little vessels of His presence wherever we serve. Our prayer life is nourished by daily Communion, Eucharistic Adoration, Sacred Scripture, and Marian devotions.

Our vocation is to follow St. Paul’s teaching to the Corinthians: "I made myself all things to all people in order to save all," 1 Corinthians 9:24. As Daughters of Mary, our ministry is focused on loving God and our neighbors through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Inspired by Blessed John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization "to incarnate Christian values and open the Gospel message to human cultures.&rdquo, our charism is to be Ambassadors of Christ through word and deed. Our call is to incarnate the love and peace of the Holy Family of Nazareth, God’s love for all His people, and the gracious and kind motherhood of Mary for the Church and all her children.

Community Life

it is very important for each member in our community to foster a joyful spirit. This joy will give them the vitality to carry out their mission in serving the body of Christ.

To care for the well being of our Sisters there are a few further things which will be essential to our community life:

• Healthy diet and regular exercise: Our body is God’s temple and the healthier the Sisters are the better we can carry out our mission.
• Each Sister will observe once a week a day of solitude.
• As a community we will have a monthly weekend for spiritual refreshment and recreation.
• Each Sister is expected to take an annual eight day retreat outside of the annual community retreat.
• Each Sister is encouraged to meet with a spiritual director every month

The spiritual directors for the Sisters will be selected prayerfully according to the spirituality and charism of our formation. The mother servant of the community, along with her council will review the selection of spiritual directors

Links

• "Living in the Holy Spirit."
• The Good Catholic Life, "Sr. Olga Yaqob."
• Daughters of Mary of Nazareth. An Apostolic and Contemplative Community of Religious Women in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.
• Prayers of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth.
• "Iraqi woman founds new order of sisters in Boston."
• "Sister Olga Yaqob Named University Chaplain for BU’s Catholics."
• "Catholic Chaplain Sister Olga Leaving BU."
• "Journey of Faith."