What's Happening

October 20, 2025, Baltimore, Maryland – Sister Lois Paha, OP, received the 2025 Alleluia Award during the annual conference of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions (FDLC), held September 30, 2025, through October 2, 2025, in Baltimore, Maryland. She was recognized for serving the Federation with distinction, and for “sharing her skills, wisdom, and resources in order to promote sound liturgical practice and to advance the liturgical renewal” of the Second Vatican Council.

Unable to attend the conference, Sister Lois accepted the award with video-recorded remarks, while two deacons from the Diocese of Tucson accepted the award on her behalf. 

Sister Lois served for 16 years as the Director of Liturgy for the Diocese of Austin, Texas, then moved in 2005 to the Diocese of Tucson, Arizona, as the Director of Formation. She added the Worship Office to the ministries of the diocese where she still ministers.  

As a liturgical minister, Sister Lois was active in the FDLC, attending her first meeting in 1989. As a representative of Region VIII, she served on the FDLC Board of Directors, at one point serving as its Vice-Chair. She has also been President of the Board of the Southwest Liturgical Conference (SWLC).

Sister Lois holds master’s degrees in teaching religion from St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont, 1980, and in theology with an emphasis on liturgical studies from the University of Notre Dame, 1989. She also earned a Doctor of Ministry from the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, in 2012.

In her acceptance speech, she quoted from an early mentor, Adrian Dominican Sister Joyce LaVoy, OP: “Be sure that whatever you sing or say, will help the people pray.” She focused on that mantra as the ultimate goal of her liturgical ministry. 

Sister Lois shared in her talk her early love for liturgy: from her excitement over receiving a prayer book while she prepared for First Communion to her Christmas gift request in seventh grade for the Marian Missal, which displayed the text of the Mass in Latin and English. “God put the prayerbooks in my hand and said go for it,” she said in explanation of her work in liturgical formation.

“For me the greatest blessing is to see the faces and hear the voices of the people with whom I am privileged to minister, to pass on the tools, the encouragement, and the mantra ‘to help the people pray,’” Sister Lois said in the conclusion of her acceptance talk. 

When Sister Lois first served on the FDLC in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Austin, one of the main projects was the implementation of the Vatican II revisions of the liturgical documents. Her role on the Board of Directors was to “bring the reform of the liturgy to the dioceses and regions we represented.”  

In her direct work with parish committees and parishioners, Sister Lois emphasizes that “the prayer of the Church belongs to us, that it doesn’t just belong to the priest or the deacon or the reader.” Before Vatican II, she said, the laity were “silent spectators in the pews, and we watched the Mass. But with the reforms, the full, active, and conscious participation [of the laity] was the call. The reforms of the liturgy were intended to allow everyone to be included.”

Sister Lois emphasized the importance of the laity’s full participation in Mass. The reforms of Vatican II “call us to listen, to respond, to sing if we can, to be attentive to the prayers that are spoken, to take seriously the homily,” she said. “What we do on Sunday has to prepare us for what we do during the week. The Sunday Liturgy is the strength we have and the guide we have for the whole week.” 

In answer to Catholics who say they are not “fed” by the Mass, Sister Lois encouraged them to reach out to those in charge of the liturgy and offer advice on what would nurture them. At the same time, she said, “Sometimes we have to be careful about our expectations and allow God to really surprise us, even in the quiet. If we listen to the words and listen to the silence, what is the message that God is trying to offer to us? … We have to make an effort to be open to the mystery of how God will enter our lives.”