Barbara Ann "Bobby" English

Sister Barbara Ann “Bobby” English, SNDdeN was born in Upper Darby and raised in Media, Pennsylvania. She is a proud graduate of Notre Dame High School in Moylan, Pennsylvania. After graduation, she decided to enter the convent. Her favorite teacher was Sister Joseph Mary Donohue, whom she admired for her pedagogical skills, her humor and her easy-going way. She figured if “Jo” had made a go of it in Notre Dame, she also could fit in.

After the initial preparatory years, Sister Bobby began her 12-year stint as an elementary school teacher. Like most teachers of her time, during her first teaching years, she taught all the subjects in a contained classroom. During those years, she taught at St. James School, Mt. Rainier, Maryland; Saint Joachim and Anne, Queens Village, New York; Our Lady of Victory School, Southern Pines, North Carolina; Holy Trinity School, Glen Burnie, Maryland; St. Anthony School, Southern Pines, North Carolina; St. Martin’s School, Washington, D.C.; and St. Thomas More School, Decatur, Georgia. She also substituted short-term for sick sisters at Trinity Preparatory School, Ilchester, Maryland and at St. Aloysius School in Washington, D.C.

“My early years in ministry blessed me with elementary school children, grades 4-8, in Catholic schools from New York to Georgia,” she recalls. “Among them were the outstanding students of Our Lady of Victory in Southern Pines, North Carolina. I taught grades 4-5-6, or I should say these young students taught me to create an interactive classroom where we all helped each other to learn. They were stars! I am forever grateful for their mentoring me to attend to the whole child. When integration of the schools took place, I was blessed to meet these same children again in grades 7-8.” Later, in the 1960s, she experimented with her peers in specializing. While some taught Math and Science, Sister Bobby taught English and Reading.

At St. Thomas More in Georgia, another breakthrough experience took place. Sister Bobby initiated work with the community at large, beginning with an after-school program with the children in the projects across the street from St. Thomas More. Thus began a passion for community development and community organizing.

In 1966, the Congregation asked Sister Bobby to join a second team of Sisters for their mission in northeast Brazil. She and four other Sisters went to Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, for a language and acculturation course with missionaries from 10 countries. After four months, the four SNDdeNs traveled to the town of Coroata in northeast Brazil. For the next 19 years, Sister Bobby, now Irmâ Bárbara, engaged with Brazilian rural and urban workers in pastoral work that strengthened community ties and organized ways to defend human rights through unions, cooperatives and associations at local, municipal, state and national levels.

“Part pastoral work, part community organizing, these folks taught me to stand by them as they struggled to claim their rights and take their place in a changing society,” she says. “Coping with widespread illiteracy, I worked with a local Brazilian team to create audiovisual tools that sparked dialogue about their problems and empowered action for change. Salvation history was the background text for helping them understand God’s call out of oppression into liberation.”

In 1985, Sister Bobby returned to the United States and began another community venture. For 28 years as director of the Julie Community Center in southeast Baltimore, she helped residents address specific problems and organize around general needs, such as adult education, affordable housing, public health and safe, fun places for their youth.

“I was able to put into play all that I had learned along the way with different age groups and cultures, and create a multi-purpose community center centered in the community,” says Sister Bobby. “God blessed it and kept it going.”

She retired in the fall of 2013 and was soon elected to the leadership team responsible for merging five former units or provinces into a new coast-to-coast unit called the U.S. East-West Province.

Sister Bobby now lives in Baltimore, where she says, “Retirement years have been full of internal administrative service at province levels and contributions to SNDdeN national communications.” She also engages in grassroots meetings to reflect on our socio-political realities, imagine effective action and celebrate life and God’s goodness.

Updated in 2026