Mrs. Edwards was born to affluent parents in what was German Silesia before World War II. She knew a happy home filled with frequent guests.

“In our house, we held dances and moved the tables to the wall. My father played piano badly and sang badly,” she said. “We laughed a lot.”

Despite their affluence, Milly and Artur Nickel lived a life of deep spirituality. Artur was educated by Jesuits, and Mrs. Edwards found out after the death of her mother that Milly had been a Franciscan Tertiary. Both had risked their lives to help Jews during World War II, something Mrs. Edwards also found out later.

“Even the children might accidentally talk during Hitler times,” she said. “There was a double speak in the Catholic hospital. The doctor would say, ‘Frau Nickel, I don’t have time to see you because these medicines are old, and I have to dispose of them.’ My mother would say, ‘Oh, I will help you.’ But she would take them to the Jewish hospital with food in a basket.”

Her father was part of a secret network that evacuated Jewish children to a Catholic monastery. “I remember a lot of cousins, but I didn’t know how we were related,” she said. “They would say the child was going to see an aunt, and that my father was going to the same city.”

“My parents quietly did things to help people,” she said.

Artur Nickel eventually went missing, a mystery never solved. When the Russian Army took over Eastern Germany, Mrs. Edwards, then 14, was forced to leave Silesia with her mother. The Russians reinvented her homeland as a Polish one.

Mrs. Edwards and her mother experienced hunger, homelessness, and prejudice. “To this day, I still cannot think of Las Posadas without crying,” she said of Mary and Joseph looking for shelter.

As refugees, Mrs. Edwards and her mother hid in barns to sleep. “I was afraid of the rats that would jump in the dark, but I wasn’t allowed to scream,” she said. “My mother would sleep with her hand over my mouth.”

At some point, Russian soldiers found the two women. The soldiers did what was common, brutally abusing the women. Mrs. Nickel had the radical Franciscan love of Jesus that thought of Jesus above the abuse.

“My mother made us pray rosaries for the people who mistreated us,” she said. “Mother said, ‘Jesus wants everyone to be with him in Heaven, so we have to ask God that he would do that for our enemies.’ But I found that very hard to do.”

It took years for Mrs. Edwards to find the value of praying for abusers, even though, unhappily, she helped pray for a year and a half.

At the age of 93, Mrs. Edwards wrote her first book, an autobiography entitled Journey from the Land Under the Cross, which details the miraculous fruit of the prayers. In the book, Mrs. Edwards writes that she worked with a psychiatrist who felt the rosaries she prayed with her mother healed many of her traumas.

Mrs. Edwards is now deeply grateful for the lesson. “My mother walked me through it,” she said. “One day, I was just free.”

Though Mrs. Edwards is no longer able to attend Mass, her pastor, Father Will Rooney, has befriended her through gatherings in her home. “She knows how to command a room,” he said. “People stop talking and listen to her stories with a deference to wisdom.”

When it comes to forgiveness, Father Rooney said it is an act of the will. “Negative feelings are not a sin,” he said, “and maybe they create an occasion of virtue to still wish the other person’s good even when we’re hurt.”

Mrs. Edwards later married an American soldier and moved to Texas. She tried to teach others her parents’ lessons on forgiveness, detachment, generosity, and love of study while teaching middle school at St. Mary’s in Temple.

“I told Sister Virginia I didn’t want to teach science or math, so we split seventh and eighth grade. Eighth grade is lively. If you can turn that for the good, it’s an interesting time,” she said. “Those are my preferred people.”

Mrs. Edwards later served as principal of the school for 26 years. “I hope I taught the truth and a love for God,” she said.

Father Rooney is confident that she provided a great example of faithfulness to all she taught and loved.

“She was never able to have children,” he said, “but she gave her life to St. Mary’s and generations of people know Loris Edwards.”

Mrs. Edwards also served her parish in Bible study. “My father taught me about the Bible in the mornings,” she said. “He had a way of making people in the Bible come alive.

I remember how King David’s wife did not think it kingly for him to dance before the Ark of the Lord. (2 Sm 6:16) My father said she must not have been properly educated on having joy in her heart.”

She strongly encourages all to read Scripture “if you want to know God better.”

Karl Kuykendall is another friend who visits Mrs. Edwards, whom he met through Bible study. “People were interested in the books, but they stayed for Mrs. Edwards,” he said. “There was a lot of love in that class.”

Mrs. Edwards authored three books in her 90s with Kuykendall’s help. She is still finding ways to share her life, even as a homebound widow, and her house is often filled with guests the way her parents’ home was in Silesia.

“I have a lot of friends,” she said. “There’s a lot I can be happy about.”