What's Happening

December 18, 2020, Adrian, Michigan – Sister Elise García, OP, President of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), recently took part in a discussion on the pandemic, racism, and religious life with other leaders from LCWR and the International Union of Superiors General (UISG). The discussion was facilitated by Global Sisters Report, a project of National Catholic Reporter.

During the discussion, Sister Elise noted the challenges that many Adrian Dominican Sisters face in sheltering in place at the Dominican Life Center rather than serving on the front lines. Her hope is that as a society we would emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with new learnings. “There is no going back to the other normal,” she said. “The experience of this last year of forcing ourselves to find other ways, meaningful ways of gathering at the heart level, using technology has been really significant, and it coincides with the imperatives of climate change going forward.”

Sister Elise also spoke of the LCWR’s focus in the next five years on dismantling racism, and particularly of the focus of the LCWR leadership on white privilege and white supremacy. The process “really involves looking at both personal and systemic racism in a very rigorous way,” Sister Elise said. “We recognize that this whole issue of racism is multilayered and it's not something that you can address with one action. There are multiple pathways we're taking.” 

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