Sister Stella Goodpasture (30 Aug 1930 – 13 Dec 2025), a Rebel in Nun’s Clothing

OBITUARIES, 22 Dec 2025

Marilyn Langlois | Marilyn's Musings – TRANSCEND Media Service

Sister Stella demonstrating in San Francisco over the disappeared Haitian human rights advocate Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine in 2007

Another Giant of Justice Joins the Ancestors

My mentor, comrade and friend, Sister Stella Marie Goodpasture, passed away last week at age 95, a few months after her 75-year jubilee celebration with the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose in California. I miss her very much.

She was a quintessential activist whose superpower lay not in occasional loud rabble-rousing, but in a calm intensity that burned constantly within her and fueled a life of tangible solidarity with some of the world’s most vulnerable.

As her apt last name suggests, Sister Stella Goodpasture’s generous and always principled presence provided reliable spiritual sustenance to everyone whose life she touched. For me, an activist often distraught and overwhelmed by the unspeakable suffering that toxic power structures are inflicting on so many fellow human beings, Sister Stella was my rock. Her steady and unflappable demeanor when faced with the unspeakable gave many of us the strength to persevere.

Two of her childhood years were spent in an orphanage, when her mother was incapacitated and it was rare in those days for a man to care for his children alone. Sister Stella felt a calling to address social inequities in her early youth. Upon turning 20, she took her vows with the Dominican Sisters, devoting the rest of her life in service to humanity. She taught at schools in several low-income communities in northern and southern California. At 52 she became a speaker for the Catholic Peace Coalition and assumed the title of Justice Promoter, in line with her compassion for the oppressed and her aspiration to right the wrongs of the world.

I met Sister Stella in the early 2000’s amid protests against US wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. She was arrested many times at sit-ins calling for an end to nuclear weapons, denouncing US complicity in the February 29. 2004 coup d’etat against Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and many other injustices. I joined her a few times in civil disobedience and wondered what went through the minds of young policemen facing the kind and steady gaze of this elderly nun as they handcuffed her. Surely their hearts were touched and perhaps moved to question more deeply why she was there.

Sister Stella in Haiti 2006

Haiti, ground zero for resistance to slavery, colonialism, imperialism and racism, was the focus of our shared activism. As members of the Haiti Action Committee, Sister Stella and I travelled there together in 2004 and 2006, to bear witness and provide accompaniment amidst the brutal repression of the coup regime. Haitians from Aristide’s Lavalas movement, many of whom were in hiding, implored us to tell people back home how the US-backed coup regime was killing, disappearing and stripping people of jobs and housing.

During his brief time as president, Aristide had begun constructing housing in poor neighborhoods, completing three high quality apartment complexes (all of which withstood the devastating 2010 earthquake) before being prematurely ousted. In 2004, A man whose family resided in one of them told us that UN officials wanted them to leave, as their apartment building was to become administrative headquarters for MINUSTAH (the multi-national military force sent to Haiti by the UN after the coup and used as a tool to prop up the coup regime). He begged us to do whatever we could to stop the evictions.

We sympathized with his plight. How could the UN possibly justify displacing poor people from their housing and using it as their office space? I was outraged, but didn’t know how we could help. Sister Stella, however, was quite insistent that we somehow get in touch with the head of MINUSTAH, whose office was inaccessible behind the fortress-like walls of an upscale hotel in Port-au-Prince. We were staying in a simple guest house in an orphanage and our only communication device was a burner flip phone we had borrowed for the duration of our stay.

Undeterred, Sister Stella said, “Let’s find a word processor and printer (virtually non-existent in the neighborhoods we frequented!), so we can write a formal letter over our signatures as Dominican Sisters (I had a fake calling card to match hers!) to the head of MINUSTAH and bring it to the guard house of that hotel.” With some effort we managed to do so, and the very next day, our flip phone rang. MINUSTAH’s chief of administration wanted to meet with us to clear up any misunderstanding.

Turns out UN staff had been assured by Haitian officials that the building was vacant and they could have it. Sister Stella asked if he would be willing to meet with the residents who did in fact live there. We were able to arrange for two such meetings, in which the residents themselves made it clear they depended on this housing, paid rent and had no desire to leave. Unable to get any cooperation from Haitian officials on resolving the issue, the UN ultimately dropped the plan to take over the building, and the families were able to stay for at least another 20 years. One family that has kept in touch asks regularly about Soeur Stella and sends blessings her way.

This small victory was palpable but fleeting. Amidst intensified repression in recent years by armed paramilitaries (akin to the Tonton Macoutes of the Duvalier era) with indirect backing of Western powers that currently control Haiti in the absence of any elected officials, the residents of that apartment building have since been driven out and have joined the 1.3 million internally displaced Haitians.

Sister Stella at a village meeting in rural Haiti 2006

Sister Stella, behind her pleasant demeanor, had no illusions about the deceptions and high crimes perpetrated by elements of the US government to further its deadly imperialistic agenda. Like many others in the peace movement, she and I were horrified at the militaristic US response to the events of 9/11. But she dug deeper. In late 2003 she approached me, fixing me with her steely blue eyes, handed me a VHS tape and implored earnestly, “Marilyn, you must watch this.”

Hearing that from her, I didn’t hesitate, and took the content seriously, a talk by the late Michael Ruppert, one of the early 9/11 truth researchers. It allowed me to open my eyes to obvious evidence pointing to complicity in that crime against humanity by elements of the US government and their oligarchical puppet masters to justify the unending war on terror abroad and curtailment of liberties at home. Sister Stella pointed me on a path that ultimately led me to actively join the 9/11 truth movement, aiming to shatter the false narratives that are used to justify so much violence and warfare.

Sister Stella looked unflinchingly at the injustices that abound, never ceasing to call them out and demand dignity for the poor. Until advanced age and health conditions prevented it, she showed up and lent her voice to countless demonstrations, vigils, teach-ins, legislative hearings, and strategy sessions. She spoke fluent Spanish and traveled to Haiti, Bolivia, Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, as well as Fort Benning Georgia (to protest the infamous School of the Americas where the US trained Latin American death squads), She also stood shoulder to shoulder with the homeless and oppressed in her local communities of Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond, California. She put her Christian faith into action every day.

Surpassing age 90, when she could no longer venture out or read and the internet faded away, I was able to visit her regularly in the assisted living facility of her Mother House, where she received loving care by the devoted staff. In her final 2 years, conversations became more and more one-sided, as she gradually lost her ability to speak, a bitter pill for one whose powerful voice had been unwavering for so many decades.

Her face still lit up when I relayed news of mutual friends and fellow activists, or reminisced about our past travels and adventures, but I no longer had the heart to continue updating her on the latest atrocities in Haiti, Gaza and elsewhere.

During a hospitalization over a year ago, the end seemed near, but Sister Stella doggedly clung to life. Now silent and mostly bedridden, she continued to exude that loving energy whenever I sat with her and chatted on or just shared the stillness. I often wondered what was going through her mind as the weeks and months floated on by. Clearly she had a lot of reflecting to do. I can’t help but believe she was determined to energetically broadcast good will throughout the world, a tall order in the few months remaining to her.

The Catholic church has been riddled with controversies over the centuries, but it did get some things right, like enabling Sister Stella to pursue her vocation of promoting social justice and taking exceptional care of her in her final years.

On a sunny Sunday in May, amid a serene backdrop of olive groves and emerald green hills not yet turned golden for the summer, she sat in her wheelchair all dressed up with a flower corsage to receive blessings and accolades from her religious community and friends as her 75th jubilee with the Dominican Sisters was celebrated. Her tired yet radiant countenance evinced the wisdom of someone in touch with the core of life’s essence.

Sister Stella Marie Goodpasture, presente!

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