Meet the Blogger - Dolores Hanley McDiarmid

Dolores Hanley McDiarmid received a master’s degree in visual disabilities from Florida State University in 1980. In 2009 she earned a master’s degree in pastoral ministries at St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida.

From January 1981 to July 2017, she dedicated her professional life to teaching and ministering to people living with visual disabilities and blindness. In 2017 she published a book Moved by the Spirit A Call to Work with People Living with Visual Impairments and Blindness. It shares how she incorporated her faith into her career.

The beginning years of retirement were spent making personalized home-made cards for friends, journaling, reading spiritual books, writing, attending Mass and Eucharistic Adoration in order to discern God’s Will for the next chapter of her life, as well as spending more time with her husband, John, and their cat, Snoopy.

In 2021, after reading IN SINU JESU When Heart Speaks to Heart; The Journal of a Priest at Prayer and learning more about Blessed Carlo Acutis, who had a devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, she felt a deep calling to spend more time at Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and to encourage others to spend more time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Dolores is an active parishioner at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She serves on the Social and Events Committee, is a Eucharistic Minister bringing Holy Communion to those who are sick or homebound and helps prepare the chapel for Eucharistic Adoration. Like the patron of her church, Saint Pius X, whose nickname was “Perpetuum Mobile,” she too is always on the move.

Favorite quote: “The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will spend on earth.” St. Teresa of Calcutta.