EIGHTY-six year-old Monica Dobbins, known to many Capuchins as ‘Ma’, is the latest to join a select few Australians to be made an affiliate of the order.
Mrs Dobbins, who lives at Nazareth House for the aged at Wynnum North on Brisbane’s bayside, received her certificate of affiliation from the Capuchins’ world leader, Fr John Corrivau, at a Mass at Guardian Angels’ Church, Wynnum on February 15.
She became a close friend of the Capuchins from her days as a cook and housekeeper at St Laurence’s Monastery at Wynnum.
She worked there for about 25 years from the 1960s, in the days when the monastery was a theology house and then the novitiate for the Australian province.
The Capuchins’ Australian provincial, Fr Julian Messina, who also attended the Mass where Mrs Dobbins was honoured, said she was awarded affiliation ‘for her fraternal love and service to the friars of the province’.
Mrs Dobbins is the 18th person in Australia to receive the honour, of which only four others are still alive.
