ST. LOUIS — With a focus on social justice, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious concluded its annual general assembly with an eye on the issues that will guide its commitments for the next three years and a celebration of the transfer of leadership.
Dominican Sister Maureen Geary becomes president-elect of the organization that represent 80 percent of Catholic sisters in the United States. She is one of the three-member presidential team.
A councilor for her order based in Grand Rapids, Mich., Sr. Geary is in her 16th year of congregation leadership. She has served on the LCWR national board and several committees. In addition, she has worked as a certified public accountant and attorney and has served in ministries with the Diocese of Grand Rapids Secretariat for Social Justice and the Kent County Coalition to End Homelessness.
Sr. Rebecca Ann Gemma, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Ill., moved into the president role, succeeding Sr. Jane Herb, of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who became past president.
Even as Sr. Elise Garcia, of the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Mich., completed her term in the presidential triumvirate, Sr. Carol Zinn, a Sister of St. Joseph and LCWR’s executive director, told her, to appreciative laughs, “it is not over.”
Sr. Zinn thanked Sr. Garcia for her leadership during a particularly difficult time given the pandemic, which created myriad challenges for congregations as well as LCWR.
She called Sr. Garcia a “manifestation of global sisterhood,” saying “you are the living invitation to porous borders.” She also noted that Sr. Garcia has “an incredible capacity to create integrative partnerships and clearly the Gospel message in the public square is what your life is about.”
LCWR voted to renew the focus of its 2019-2022 resolution: seeking communion at the intersection of racism, forced migration and the climate crisis. Those three issues will once again serve as a primary focus for the conference through 2025.
“We are heartbroken by the myriad ways our one human family and earth, our common home, continue to suffer from disconnection, indifference, violence and the fear in the face of racism, forced migration and climate crisis,” stated the resolution, an outcome of “reading the signs of the times” and the “desire to create communion.”
“Responding to God who loves all creation into being, we recommit ourselves to initiating and supporting opportunities to create a union and to more deeply examine the root causes of injustice,” it said.
The sisters put a priority on the intersection of racism, forced migration and the climate crisis in projects and actions they take on for the next three years.
“We recognize a sense of urgency and pledge prayer, education, action and advocacy,” the resolution said. “We will use our collective voices, resources and influence in collaboration with others to establish justice, which reflects God’s creating love.”
LCWR’s Global Concerns Committee presented the resolution before inviting a moment of quiet contemplation and table discussions. Sisters then shared their comments with the wider assembly.
One table noted the resolution is something that congregations of all sizes and charisms can “buy into” and that it puts them “in alignment with Laudato Si’,” serving as an extension of Pope Francis’ encyclical regarding care of the earth as the common home for all.
Following speeches, readings about the history of racism in Missouri, as well as the harmful effects of the Mississippi River being the second most-polluted waterway in the country – which, the presenters noted, disproportionately affects St. Louis’ Black population – sisters engaged in a symbolic justice action through prayer.
Another afternoon session included briefly celebrating the 50th anniversary of Network, a Washington-based Catholic social justice lobbying organization.
Sr. Garcia presented Novak with a check for $100,000 in “anticipation and support for the next 50 years of transformative political engagement.”
The assembly in St. Louis Aug. 9-12 was the first in-person gathering since the pandemic began in 2020.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in Global Sisters Report, a project of National Catholic Reporter. The website is http://globalsistersreport.org.
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