Sister M. Magdala Davlin died a peaceful death at Rosary Care Center in Sylvania, Ohio, on September 9, 2026, five days before her 80th birthday. The daughter of Robert and Alice Davlin came to the convent in Sylvania in 1960 from SS. Peter and Paul Parish in Sandusky, Ohio. She made her first profession in 1966 and her final profession in 1972. She earned an A.A. degree from Lourdes Junior College in Sylvania; a B.S. degree in nursing from Madonna College in Livonia, Michigan; and a M.S.N. degree from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

In her 60 years of service with the people of God, Sister Magdala taught in elementary schools for five years and ministered as a nurse in hospitals and nursing homes for almost 43 years. After a brief time as a coordinator of an inner-city clinic in Toledo, she served as Pastoral Care Director at Trinity Medical Center West in Steubenville, Ohio, at the time one of the Congregation’s sponsored ministries. When she returned to the Motherhouse in 2015, Sister Magdala began to fulfill a lifelong dream of developing and using her artistic talents as she took art classes at Lourdes University and worked in Alverno Studio with Sister Jane Mary Sorosiak and her volunteers. Together they designed, produced and installed numerous ceramic murals on the Motherhouse campus as well as in churches, retirement communities and public places in several states. Sister Magdala’s special project, as she indicated in her 60th Jubilee reflection, is the bronze statue of Mother Mary Adelaide Sandusky, the Foundress of the Sylvania Franciscans. “In March of 2021, I was pleased to unveil, with Lourdes University sculpture instructor, Patrick DuBreuil, the enduring bronze sculpture…To me it is created and positioned on campus where it celebrates a graced vision of all that has been and all that will be.” To have known Sister Magdala is to have the privilege of being in the presence of someone who shared her gentle, peaceful, quiet manner going about doing good. She once wrote that she considered her greatest accomplishment would be to get to Heaven and prayed this prayer since she was a young Sister— “Lord, make me a religious according to your own heart; meek, humble and obedient, a soul of meditation and of prayer; insensible to contempt, to injury, to earthly things and sensible only to Thy love and the Goods of the Holy Spirit.”

This indeed was her lifetime work. Sister Magdala will be sorely missed by her Franciscan Sisters, especially her classmates and those who cared for her in her illness. She will also be missed by the many volunteers who worked with her in Alverno Studio on the Motherhouse campus. She is survived by her siblings Christine Kochendoerfer, Elizabeth (Robert) Cassidy, and Robert (Suzanne) Davlin Jr., as well as many nieces and nephews.
Obituary written by Sister Mary Thill, OSF.