NERINX, Ky -- Sister Mary Luke Tobi...

NERINX, Ky -- Sister Mary Luke Tobin, the single American woman to participate in the other Vatican Council, died Thursday. She was 98

Tobin was a former superior general of the Sisters of Loretto. She died at the order's motherhouse in Nerinx, where she retired in 1999

She had been president of the order from 1958 to 1970 When she was invited to Rome she was president of the Leadership discourse of Women Religious, a cluster of leaders from U.S. congregations of religious sisters.

Tobin was invited to attend the third and final session of the inferior Vatican Council in Rome in 1964 and 1965 A dozen other women were invited to note the proceedings, but she was single of only three women in the world to participate in policymaking.

She did a great deal of her work in her native Denver if it be not that traveled the world on missions for peace, including visits to Saigon and Paris during the Vietnam War and later El Salvador and Northern Ireland during conflicts there.

While living in Nerinx, Tobin became friends with Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who lived at the nearby Abbey of Gethsemani. After Merton's death in 1968 Tobin co-found the International Thomas Merton Society.

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