From the Executive Director
To all our frends and guests of Bon Secours. If you have not seen this exhibit or if you have time to attend the special session on February 24, this is a great investment for your time… and a source of pride and gratitutde for all the women who helped form our Cathlic heritage.
Thomas E. Little, Ed.D.
Executive Director
Bon Secours Spiritual Center
"WOMEN & SPIRIT: Catholic Sisters in America" is a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in association with Cincinnati Museum Center. Its purpose is to reveal the mystery behind a small group of innovative American women who helped shape the nation’s social and cultural landscape, professed religious sisters.
You will meet women who corresponded with President Thomas Jefferson, talked down bandits and roughnecks, lugged pianos into the wilderness, and provided the nation’s first health insurance to Midwestern loggers. Discover sisters’ courage during the Civil War, the Gold Rush, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Influenza Epidemic, the Civil Rights Movement, and Hurricane Katrina.
All that history is available locally from January 15, 2010 - April 25, 2010 at the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.
In particular a Free Public Program at Smithsonian’s International Gallery to celebrate Black History Month and Catholic Sisters’ Commitment to Education is being presented on February 24 from 11 to 12 Noon in the Center’s Discovery Theatre.
This program highlights Catholic sisters and their colleagues in the field of education both yesterday and today, their efforts, accomplishments, and challenges, with a special focus on educational endeavors in the African American community.
Sister Patricia Haley, SCN, president of the National Black Sisters Conference, will moderate this panel discussion with Sister Mary Charlotte Marshall, OSP; Sister Barbara Spears, SNJM; and Sister Mary Bourdon, RJM.
Through rare artifacts, compelling photographs and videos, and vivid first-person narratives, the Women & Spirit exhibit explores the contributions Catholic sisters made – and continue to make – in shaping the nation’s social and cultural landscape. The exhibit is on view in the International Gallery of the S. Dillon Ripley Center through April 25, 2010.
This “Women in Education: Continuing the Legacy” public program and the Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters of America exhibit are projects of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.