Loretto Sister Mary Luke Tobin, who played a leading role in the U.S. renewal of religious life and was one of a handful of female observers at the Second Vatican Council, died at the Loretto motherhouse in Nerinx Aug. 24. She was 98 years old.

Sister Tobin donated her body to science. A memorial service is to be held at the motherhouse Oct. 7.

An ardent ecumenist and advocate of church renewal, peace, social justice and women's rights in church and society, Sister Tobin was president of her order from 1958 to 1970 and was head of what is now the Leadership Conference of Women Religious during Vatican II.

She was one of only 15 women worldwide invited to attend the council's last two sessions as an auditor, and she was part of the commission that drafted "Gaudium et Spes," the council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Only two other women were members of commissions that drafted council documents.

Born in Denver May 16, 1908, Ruth Marie Tobin joined the Loretto community and took the religious name Mary Luke when she professed her vows in 1927.

A ballet student and dance teacher before she entered the convent, she became a teacher and principal of elementary and high schools staffed by her order in Missouri, Colorado and Illinois.

Her leadership role in the Sisters of Loretto began in 1952, when she was elected to the community's general council. Six years later she was elected mother general of the order, a position she held for two six-year terms.

In 1964 she was elected chairwoman of the Conference of Major Superiors of Women --- a Vatican-established national organization of heads of women's religious orders --- which in 1971 was renamed the LCWR. Shortly after her election to the national post she was one of the few women, and the only American woman, invited to attend Vatican II as an auditor. Pope Paul VI appointed the female auditors after Belgian Cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens complained that half of humanity, women, had no representation at the council.

She learned of the appointment while traveling by ship to Rome at the urging of fellow religious superiors, in order to be near the council proceedings and learn firsthand what was happening there.

Speaking to reporters after sitting in on her first council meeting Oct. 1, 1964, she expressed hopes that Vatican II would lead to far greater inclusion of women in church leadership. "I hope some real progress will be made in acknowledging the great potential that remains to be tapped," she said. "For instance, the diaconate, now to be reinstated as a sacramental order even for married men, might well be a calling for women, too."

At a reception during the council's 1964 session, she spoke of an expanding role for women religious in many fields, including racial justice, housing, health care, ecumenism, service to and advocacy for the poor, and campus and parish ministry. She said that in their leading role in Catholic education sisters "will prove powerful channels for promoting the message of the council fathers."

In the years that followed she was one of the pioneers in renewal of religious life, which she said was chiefly about renewal of the interior life rather than changes in nuns' habits or constitutions.

She was one of the original members of the International Union of Superiors General, formed after Vatican II to promote mutual exchange and collaboration among congregations of women religious.

She wrote and spoke widely on women's rights and peace and social justice issues in the years after the council, risking arrest at nuclear weapons sites, picketing with the United Farm Workers of America, protesting the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, advocating corporate justice measures at stockholders' meetings and leading numerous workshops on peace and justice.

From 1972 to 1978 she was director of citizen action on the national staff of Church Women United, an ecumenical organization promoting the role of women in the churches.

A longtime friend of Thomas (Father Louis) Merton, the noted Trappist monk of Gethsemane Abbey, which is near the Loretto motherhouse, Sister Tobin founded the Thomas Merton Center for Creative Exchange in Denver in 1979 and headed it until her retirement in 1999.

She was a frequent lecturer on Merton and a charter member of the International Thomas Merton Society. She was also in demand as a retreat leader and speaker on spirituality and the integration of contemplation and action.

In her 1981 autobiography, "Hope Is an Open Door," she wrote that the admission of even a few women to the proceedings of Vatican II "lifted my heart."

"True, 15 women among 2,500 bishops was hardly a 'quota,' but it was a beginning," she wrote.

---CNS