Celebrating Traditions
Changing the World
March 8-14, 2021
Catholic Sisters Week shines a light on the spirituality, mission, and community building of women religious.
Celebrating Traditions
Changing the World
March 8-14, 2021
Catholic Sisters Week shines a light on the spirituality, mission and community building of women religious.
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.
News
Thank you to the sisters
Msgr. Dennis Metzger, Diocese of Toledo, offers his gratitude for religious sisters. He speaks from Queen of Peace Chapel, Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio
Testimony for Catholic Sisters Week
Tina Tamburro speaks of her long association with the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland where she is now on their Advisory Board
Give thanks for generosity, dedication and witness
Bishop Lawrence Persico, Diocese of Erie, PA, offers this message for Catholic Sisters Week.
Benedictine Sisters celebrate National Catholic Sisters Week by focusing on food insecurity worsened by pandemic
The Benedictine Sisters of Delaware are joining communities of religious women across the country to put a spotlight on food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Catholic Sisters Week
Gary Loncki, CWR member and Communicator for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas talks about Catholic Sisters Week.
Nuns & Nones
Katie Gordon, Nuns & Nones National Organizer, shares why Sisters’ stories are transforming.
Heroes: Women Religious
Fr. James Martin, SJ, talks about his heroes, women religious.
A message from Sister Jean
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM, is a chaplain for the Loyola Ramblers men’s basketball team of Loyola University Chicago. She invites us to celebrate Catholic Sisters Week.
Changing the World by Feeding the Homeless
The Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, MN, have been supplying meals two times a week to the homeless population who are currently residing at the Rodeway Inn in St. Joseph. They are changing the world. Mark Catholic Sisters Week 2021 by changing the world, too. Click image to read more.
Congregations plan to honor churchwomen slain in El Salvador 40 years ago
Forty years after their brutal murders on Dec. 2, 1980, the lives and tragic deaths of four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador will be commemorated in a number of prayer services, vigils, and online events.
Catholic Sisters Week
Since the fall of 2019, Catholic Sisters Week (formerly National Catholic Sisters Week) is under the direction of Communicators for Women Religious (CWR). As we continue to develop new resources and programming ideas, you will notice both continuity and change, beginning with the name: CWR renamed the initiative “Catholic Sisters Week,” signaling a desire to raise awareness of women religious not just in the United States but also internationally.
Our growing web home, catholicsistersweek.org, will provide space for listing your events, gatherings, campaigns, and activities. This is also where you’ll come to find an event you want to attend, to make a local connection, sign on to an online event, or find ideas for your own events. Information and tools for Catholic Sisters Week 2021 will be landing on this website over the next several months.
Who makes Catholic Sisters Week happen?
We encourage women religious communities and congregations and those directly connected with them:
- associates, oblates, third orders, agrégées
- donors, benefactors, and other collaborators
- friends and family members
- parishioners, clients, students, and alumnae
- Nuns & Nones groups, spirituality seekers
- and anyone who longs to be light, build community and love fearlessly
About Communicators for Women Religious
Communicators for Women Religious is 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. Catholic Sisters Week and the efforts and events associated with it dovetail seamlessly with the overall mission of CWR.
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.
