Catholic Sisters Week
“About Catholic Sisters Week
Fifty-two weeks a year women religious stand with the poor and immigrants, teach children, fight injustice, heal the sick, share spirituality, empower women, defend the planet, promote peace, create community, offer hope…
But for one week, March 8-14, we shine the spotlight on women religious and encourage a wide range of campaigns and events that invite all who follow Jesus to:
- expand and support their gospel witness
- grow the service networks they have seeded
- share their spirituality, charisms, and community
- encourage young women to consider a vocation to religious life
- support their pastoral, teaching and prophetic works
- and focus on the new world they call into being.
Who are Women Religious?
They are vowed women who give public witness to Christ through a diversity of ministerial works such as teaching, pastoral care, health care, retreat, and spirituality programs and a multitude of other outreach efforts. They often work on the frontlines of global change, striving to improve various aspects of society, especially for those on the margins. For example, today this can mean efforts to reverse the climate crisis, work for immigration reform, upholding human rights, and other social justice concerns. While prayer and community are integral to the lives of all women religious, some are called to live cloistered lives dedicated full-time to contemplative prayer.
What is a charism?
While each congregation or community of women religious give witness to the gospel, they do it through their unique charism or gift of the spirit. How that gift is lived can change as the world changes and as the membership of the community shifts. Today, many congregations are living their charisms more broadly through the work of non-vowed women and men who make formal commitments to these charisms as associates, oblates, agrégées, or third orders.
Catholic Sisters Week and Women’s History Month
Catholic Sisters Week began in 2015 as a part of National Women’s History Month. It is now an official component of Women’s History Month. It was authorized by Molly Murphy MacGregor, co-founder of National Women’s History Project, who was educated and deeply influenced by Catholic sisters. In 1981, Women’s History Month launched as a single week. By 1987, U.S. Congress formally expanded it to the full month of March.”
Catholic Sisters Week is a project of Communicators for Women Religious, a professional organization of communicators within religious congregations of women. CWR members promote an understanding of women religious, enhance their image and advance their mission.
