By Fr. OKHUELEIGBE OSEMHANTIE ÃMOS

The Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the wider Catholic community have announced the peaceful passing of Sr. Theresa Ohiani, SSH, a devoted religious, eminent educator, and former Superior General of her congregation. Sr. Theresa died on Wednesday, 26 November 2025, at the age of 67, closing a life consecrated to prayer, formation and service.

Born on 24 June 1958, a native of Kogi state, Sr. Theresa answered the call to religious life with early and steady fidelity. She professed her First Religious Vows on 10 February 1982 and offered her Perpetual Profession on 30 September 1990, committing herself for life to the charism of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For more than four decades she lived that commitment in humble fidelity, shaping lives by example and service.

A formator and leader of rare gentleness and clarity, Sr. Theresa served the congregation in a succession of formative and administrative offices: Superior General, General Councillor, Novice Directress, Postulant Directress, Vice-Principal of Presentation National High School, Benin City, and Principal of Sacred Heart High School, Evbukhu. Under her stewardship those institutions, long entrusted to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, continued to deepen their commitment to the spiritual and academic formation of girls and young women.

Colleagues and clergy remember her foremost as a woman of prayer. Her private joys, praying, singing and smiling, were the outward signs of an interior life that bore fruit in pastoral care, patient counsel and disciplined service. Described repeatedly as “prayerful, objective, simple, disciplined, sensitive and neatly presented”, Sr. Theresa combined a motherly tenderness with moral steadiness; she was a formator who coaxed vocations into maturity and a principal who balanced rigorous administration with pastoral warmth.

News of her death drew immediate and deeply felt tributes. “Great woman of God. A gallant Rev. Sister. A true mother… My hands are shaking,” wrote one priest, struggling with the suddenness of loss. Another noted, “She motivated many young people to embrace the priesthood and consecrated life.” A younger cleric testified: “Heaven has gained a saint today… She was a prayer warrior; even with her tight schedule as Principal of SHHS, she still found time for retreats. Parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes will miss her.” These responses, personal, raw, and grateful, testify to a ministry whose reach extended beyond classrooms and convent walls into parish life, vocations work and spiritual direction.

Sr. Theresa’s death comes amid a year of celebration for her congregation: the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus marked their golden jubilee in 2025, a milestone that frames her life as one thread in a wider well of service and fidelity to the Gospel. Her leadership and formation ministry helped to renew that charism in younger members and to sustain the congregation’s schools and apostolates in Benin City and beyond.

She leaves behind a grieving but grateful congregation, scores of former pupils who bear her influence in their minds and manners, many spiritual children and a large circle of priests and lay faithful who will long keep her memory in prayer. Funeral arrangements will be announced by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart Generalate in Benin City; members of the public and all who were touched by her life are invited to unite in prayer for the repose of her soul.

Sr. Theresa Ohiani’s life was a quiet cathedral of service: foundations laid in fidelity, walls built from sacrifice, and a roof held aloft by devotion. In the liturgical language she loved, we commend her to the mercy of God:

• Fr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Amos, PhD, is of the Catholic Institute of West Africa (CIWA), Port Harcourt, Nigeria.