For a hermit, Sister Olga Yaqob is remarkably extroverted. She ministers to students at Boston University's Catholic Center, crisscrosses the country giving talks on campuses, and uses public transit because by looking at other passengers, "I do feel that the world wants me to pray for them."

Yaqob, 40, is the only canonical hermit in the Archdiocese of Boston, remaining in solitude and contemplative prayer every Saturday while conducting a public ministry the rest of the week. Yet as metaphor, hermit fits her life story as Yaqob tells it. She has often stood outside the community, be it growing up in Iraq's microscopic Christian minority or leaving her family and their ancestral church to become a nun.

Just 4 feet 10 inches tall, Yaqob has been an outsized presence at BU, says Lydia Longoria, a graduate who was Yaqob's first spiritual advisee, an unusual request on Longoria's part, as Yaqob spoke little English then.

"I didn't need someone who could understand my words; I needed someone who could understand my heart," Longoria says.

Yaqob was born in Kirkuk. Her family belonged to the Assyrian Church, one of several Catholic churches with its own patriarch, or leader. Under Saddam Hussein, Christians lived peacefully with the Muslim majority, and the Assyrians treasured their heritage. Deeply religious, Yaqob attended Catholic Mass weekdays (the Assyrian Church worships only on Sundays). From about the age of 14, she wanted to be a nun.

There was an unconquerable obstacle. Until a decade ago, the Assyrian Church didn't have nuns. Answering the call meant becoming a Roman Catholic, and that, to her parents, was unthinkable.

"They never thought that their daughter could leave the church of her fathers and ancestors," she says. Also, the Islamic Middle East is a patriarchal and family-centered culture, she says. "The general belief is that God created woman to get married and raise children and have a family."

Her parents sent her to university, hoping she would meet a man and fall in love. When she graduated, around the time Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and informed her father that "God is still jealous for my heart," he told her to take her younger brother to London, ostensibly to save him from mandatory military service and the Gulf War. Her father agreed that if she did that, he would let her become a nun.

But he had also arranged a marriage for her through family in London, something she didn't learn until her brother told her the night before they were to leave Jordan for London. She prayed a lot that night and recalls thinking: "How this is happening? I did obey my parents for years. I obeyed my culture. I obeyed the tradition of my ancestors."

The next day, she put her brother on the plane, but did not board. Her parents disowned her, and she took a bus to Baghdad.

The next few years tested her beliefs. She got a job at a hospital and began bringing food and supplies to poor people and prisoners, founding a lay ministry, Love Your Neighbor. Hussein's actions and international sanctions on Iraq after the Gulf War savaged Iraqis' health and welfare. Her father had worked for an oil company and had given her a comfortable life that did not prepare her for the suffering. She ministered at Abu Ghraib and nearby prisons, a memory that makes her voice catch.

"Animals in your country lived better than prisoners in my country," she says. "There were kids in prison, between 8 and 14 years old, just because they were stealing, because they were poor. . . . They lost homes. They lost parents."

Her work came to the attention of the Assyrian bishop, who had decided to reinstate nuns in the church. He asked Yaqob to start an order; she complied. But she personally observed Roman Catholic practices, which caused friction with her bishop. Jesuit priests from Boston in Iraq arranged for her to study at Boston College. She arrived in the United States just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We had such a bond," says Longoria, who regularly seeks the nun's counsel. "It was her heart. There was an openness, a freedom, very much just reflecting holiness. . . . She's a reflection of God."

Today, Yaqob is in sporadic touch with her family. Christian Iraqis are fleeing the country after having been targeted for attack by Muslim insurgents, especially since Pope Benedict XVI quoted a medieval anti-Islam slur. (The pope apologized and said he didn't agree with the slur.) The women in Yaqob's family curb their public outings, fearing for their safety.

"The first Gulf War took us 200 years back," she says, explaining her agreement with the late John Paul II's opposition to the 2003 American invasion. "I know what I mean when I say that there's no solution with war."

By Rich Barlow
www.boston.com