Sr Patricia Swadling

Died 01 November 2022

Sr Patricia Swadling was born in Wyong on 30 December 1929, the second child of Ernest and Agnes Swadling.  Her siblings were Dorothy, Raymond, Brian, John and stepsister, Kaylene.

From the family home in Long Jetty she walked the two miles each way to The Entrance Public School. Later she attended the Gosford High School. After being instructed by the Sisters of St Joseph from Wyong, she made her First Communion and was confirmed at The Entrance when she was in Sixth class.

As a young adult, Patricia moved to Port Macquarie where she met the Lochinvar Sisters of St Joseph and felt the call to join them. She entered the Novitiate on 1 January 1951, aged twenty-one, was given the name Sr Mary Bartholomew and was professed on 4 January 1954. 

For the next seventy-one years, she served in many places in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese and at Port Macquarie and Wauchope in the Lismore Diocese, as a Primary school teacher and an administrative assistant. 

When her teaching ministry ended, Patricia became an aged care assistant in Lochinvar and Swansea.  She loved the water and became a member of the sunrise surfers in Port Macquarie.

While in care at Swansea, aged 84, she gained the Grey Medallion after a life-saving course at Speers Point Pool.

Sr Patricia Swadling died suddenly and unexpectedly in Belmont Hospital on the feast of All Saints, 1 November 2022.  Sr Patricia had been a long term resident of the Southern Cross facilities in Swansea and Caves Beach

Her funeral Mass was celebrated on 9 November in St Patrick’s Church in Swansea, the presider being Father Gerard Mackie, the local parish priest. 

At the conclusion of the Mass, the cortege moved to Lochinvar where Sr Patricia was laid to rest in the Sisters’ section of St Patrick’s cemetery.  There she awaits, with all her Sisters, the Resurrection.