About the Sisters News

Pack nothing. Bring only your determination to serve and your willingness to be free. Only surrender to the need of the Time— To love justice and walk humbly with God

Almighty Father, as we walk with Jesus through these days of Lent, show us how to know Him more nearly and love Him more dearly each day. Confident of the light and strength of the Holy Spirit, as we embark on our Lenten journey, we ask these graces in the name of Jesus who lived and died that we may have new life. Amen.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8) “Seeing with the heart is seeing the world and our brothers through God's gaze…Faith cannot be reduced to a series of theoretical beliefs, traditions, and customs. It is a bond and a path along which we follow Jesus, who renews our way of seeing the world and our brothers.” (Pope Francis, Feb 19, 2022)

Chocolate and Deforestation

February 18, 2023

Chocolate is bad for the environment. Well, some of it is anyway. Cocoa is a cash crop. It also happens to grow in places where rainforests grow. I think we all know what that means. Also, there is the problem of the things we add to cocoa beans to make them into the delectable stuff we love to eat. The biggest concern, not only for the environment but also for other justice issues, is palm oil. You’ve heard of conflict diamonds? There is also conflict palm oil! People and the plant are dying for that Oreo I love so much. Palm Oil is in many products, not only chocolate. It is also the main cash crop planted in land grabs across Africa, Indonesia, and South America. So, it is a justice issue as well as an environmental one. And, as always, the people most hurt are those who live in poverty with no voice.

I am grateful for those among you, who have trod the path before me. The work of Justice, Peace, and Care of Creation is in the DNA of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and it has grown outward to all who have encountered you.

To celebrate Catholic Schools Week, we invite you to learn more about Sister Rita Sturwold, SNDdeN. She has a wealth of experience working as a teacher and administrator, and currently has several roles with our schools in Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Call to Creation

January 28, 2023

Last week I talked about a few hopeful advances in technology that will be tools in the toolbox for our future fight against climate change. We need a lot of different tools in the toolbox. There is no single climate change cause. There is no single climate change resolution. There is no single tool that will fix it.

As Program Coordinator of Songa Mbele na Masomo Children's Centre, I (Sister Mary Akinyi, SNDdeN) do my ministry in this community based centre which opened in 2009 and began operations in 2010 in the Mukuru Slum, in Nairobi City.

The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur ask for prayers for the repose of the soul of Sister Marian Schaechtel, SNDdeN who passed away on January 21, 2023

It's A New Year!

January 7, 2023

Grandfather Great Spirit, all over the world the faces of living ones are alike. With tenderness they have come up out of the ground. Look upon your children that they may face the winds and walk the good road to the Day of Quiet.

View the full videos of our Sisters answering the question, "Why did you enter religious life and why have you stayed?'

Image of newspaper clippings of July 1942 explosion in downtown Cincinnati

It often happens, while reviewing past oral histories, that we discover a Sister was witness to and recorded local and national events. In the late evening of July 15, 1942, a gasoline explosion occurred in a garage at 511 Sycamore Street, a blast that shook the downtown area.

Notre Dame Mission Volunteers honored its various roots during AmeriCorps week, March 12 - 18. Service sites and NDMV staff took time to formally recognize and thank their Notre Dame AmeriCorps members for their service.

LCWR - membership of religious women continues to work towards healing, reconciliation, reparations, transformation, an end to systemic racism and justice for all. May God’s peace and comfort sustain all those whose lives are torn by racism and violence, and may our own lives give witness to the Gospel vision of love and compassion.

Sisters get along. They work in the trenches, they discern, they discuss, they find what Sister of Notre Dame de Namur Joan Burke calls "a common mind." It's true in Cincinnati, in Africa, in Latin America. And it's true at the United Nations, where Sister Joan, twenty years ago, became the Sisters' first non-governmental organization (NGO) representative, serving eight years in an advisory role to the world body's Economic and Social Council.

The Dorothy Stang Initiative for Laudato Si' Action "is our response to the Laudato Si' Action Platform, the call from Pope Francis to the global church," said Teresa Phillips, who heads the Ohio province's Justice, Peace and Care for Creation Commission.

Sister Teresita Weind, SNDdeN

We Sisters, Associates, Mission Volunteers, Staff, and Friends, of Notre Dame de Namur are committed to “demonstrate reverence for personality”, and nurture of each person’s God-given gift of humanity. With this determination and vision, we strive to collaborate with those among whom we live, serve, and/or minister.

A year after the martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005 in Boa Esperança, Pará, Brazil, the Stang family, during their customary family reunion, dedicated a large stone with a bronze plaque in Dorothy’s memory at Calvary Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio. On this 2021 Earth Day the stone and plaque were relocated to the newly named Sister Dorothy Stang Way. Sister Judi Clemens joined Dot’s sister, Barbara Richardson, and an intergenerational gathering of Stang family members for the dedication.

Sister Joan Burke, SNDdeN served as the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur representative to the United Nations from 2002 through 2010. She lived the better part of 50 years among people who are poor in three different countries of Africa and recently was also a professor in an adult education program at Tangaza University College in Nairobi. She has served as a member of both the Nigeria and the Kenya Provincial Leadership Teams. Below is an article written for the SND at the UN, in which Sister Joan reflects upon the UN’s recent 10-day meeting focusing on digital technologies as they relate to human wellbeing in across the globe.