Visitation House
One of Ruth’s visions was to establish a home for pregnant women in Worcester. She died before seeing her vision come to life.
After her death, a group of Ruth’s friends—social service providers and pro-life advocates—came together to found Visitation House.
Since opening its doors in 2005, Visitation House has welcomed over 300 women and their children.
Her Children
Ruth Pakaluk welcomed seven children into the world. Her fifth, Thomas Matthew, died from SIDS at seven weeks old.
Michael
Mike attended the Hartt School of Music, earned a Master’s in trumpet performance from the University of New Mexico, and now leads a prestigious high school music program. He and his wife, Kis, live with their son in California.
Maximilian
Max attended Harvard College, worked for a couple years as an editor at National Review Online, earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and currently works in the D.C. area. He and his wife, Laura, live with their four children in Maryland.
John Henry
John attended Thomas Aquinas College and, like his parents, married his college sweetheart Kasia the summer before his senior year. John earned a Master’s in accounting from Bentley University and now works for a data intelligence company. He and Kasia live with their five children in Massachusetts.
Maria
Maria attended Thomas Aquinas College, earning a Bachelor’s in the liberal arts. After college, she married her fellow classmate Sam Almeida. They have four children and are currently based in Texas.
Sarah Esther
Sarah attended Ave Maria University, studying Literature and Classical Languages. Now, she works part-time from home editing and writing. She and her husband, Noah Blanchard, live in Colorado with their two girls.
Anna Sophia
Sophie attended Ave Maria University, graduating with a Bachelor’s in Greek. She and her husband Philip Barrows live with their three children in Maryland, where they grow fruits and vegetables to sell at farmer’s markets.
On August 15, 1999, Michael married again. He and his wife, Catherine, have eight children.
Three months before she died, Ruth told Michael that she thought he should get married again.
“For the sake of the girls,” she said, “I think you should remarry.”
Get to know Ruth
In 2011, Ruth’s widowed husband Michael published The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God (Ignatius Press), a collection of Ruth’s letters and talks, as well as a brief biography of her life.
Tributes to Ruth Pakaluk
I Invite You to Meet a Warrior for Life, Peter Kreeft
(Ignatius Insight, 2011)
In this book you will meet a truly wonderful person. There are few things in life more precious than that. Even meeting a great fictional character enriches your life. But this one is real.
Since Ruth was a woman who loved God and loved life, this book of her letters and speeches is a book for everyone who loves God and who loves life. But it is especially helpful for mothers, especially stay-at-home mothers, homemakers, people with cancer, parents faced with leaving their children through death, and people who care about abortion.
[…] Read more.
Life Watch: Ruth and Michael—A Love Story, Hadley Arkes
(Crisis Magazine, 1999)
In a lovely September in New England, Ruthie Pakaluk, with her family and friends round her, gently slipped away and succumbed, at the age of 41, to the breast cancer that had hovered, with its peril, over several years. At the onset of her cancer, in her late 30s, she was at the beginning of a pregnancy. But she did not choose at that moment to diminish the peril for herself by “ending” the pregnancy. She brought her last child, Sophie, to birth, and in the most remarkable flourish, she continued— with no apparent loss of momentum— in the joyous project of raising six children and serving as president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. In everything she touched, she imparted the sense of a quick, acute mind, tempered with a philosophic reflection, and yet modulated, leavened, with a certain piety and humility.
[…] Read more.
Radiating joy amidst the screaming kids, Dwight Duncan
(Boston Pilot, 2011)
Ruth Pakaluk died of metastatic breast cancer in 1998 at the youthful age of 41. […]
One might think that her life, marked by the untimely deaths of her son Thomas, followed by her own, was tragic. Actually, it is more a divine comedy that has a happy ending, manifesting "the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," one of her favorite lines from a Graham Greene novel.
[…] Read more.
The incredible story of pro-life heroine Ruth Pakaluk, Francis Phillips
(Catholic Herald, 2012)
“Ruth Pakaluk was born in 1957; a brilliant student, she met her future husband at Harvard. Rather like Jaques and Raissa Maritain in an earlier age, the Pakaluks made a deliberate decision to search for God and to see if Christianity was true. Their search led them finally into the Catholic Church and they had seven children. After the sixth baby, Sarah, was born Ruth discovered too late that she had breast cancer. Treatment followed and thinking she was in the clear, they had another baby, Sophie. But the cancer returned and Ruth died, aged 41, in 1998.”
[…] Read more.
A Life of Dramatic Unity, Philip F. Lawler
(Catholic Culture, 2001)
My friend Ruth Pakaluk died quietly, at home, on September 23, after a long battle with cancer. Since she was a young woman (41), leaving behind a husband and six young children, her death might have seemed a horrible tragedy. Surely it was a heavy loss--for all her many friends, and especially for her family. But as family and friends gathered for the funeral, we were swept by feelings more powerful than grief.
[…] Read more.
Ruth Pakaluk, a zealous apostle in Massachusetts
(Opus Dei Today, 2010)
Both Ruth and Michael went to Harvard University. During the early part of their university studies, they were atheists, but converted to Christianity and became Evangelical Protestants. In their third year, they got married: they felt the special call to live the rest of their lives forming a family and living an intense family life. By Divine Providence, they were surrounded by good friends and, wanting to seek and find the ultimate truth, ended up converting to Catholicism.
[…] Read more.