Sister Barbara Josephine Orczyk, formerly Sister Paulissa, was a missionary most of her religious life. Sister Barbara ministered in the SSJ mission in Brazil for many years.

When she first entered the Congregation, Sister was educated as a teacher and taught at St.Stanislaus, her home parish, as well as Blessed Sacrament parish.

When the Congregation opened a mission in Brazil in the 1960s, she volunteered to go. Sister Barbara worked as a teacher and then principal. She later came back to Rochester to get her degree as a physician’s assistant.

During her 60th Jubilee in 2019, Sister Barbara reflected: “When I graduated in 1978, I returned to Brazil looking for the neediest of places to work. It was Itaguacu, a small hamlet that had a small health clinic, but no doctor in regular attendance. I got hired by the local city and worked there for 23 years. It was then that I really knew what a vocation was. God, He didn’t lead me down the straight and narrow, but instead on a crooked road from teacher, to principal, to the medical field and then as a Eucharistic Minister at St. Stanislaus parish.”