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October 20, 2022, Fort Lauderdale, Florida – If you want to die well, make peace with yourself, with God, and with your past.

That is the message that Sister Xiomara Méndez-Hernández, OP, has for people in the United States – especially for the many people who try to deny or ignore the reality of death. Sister Xiomara recently spoke to U.S. Catholic about her experience as a chaplain at Loyola University Medical Center outside of Chicago during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is now a chaplain at Holy Cross Hospital-Trinity Health in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

In the interview, Sister Xiomara recalled the experience of the first death of COVID-19 at Loyola University Medical Center – and of the multiple deaths that the chaplains, doctors, and nurses witnessed during the early weeks of the pandemic. “In less than three months, we had more than 500 deaths,” she said. “Every single day we accompanied families by phone. We were beyond exhausted.” 

Sister Xiomara said the chaplains not only accompanied the patients and their families, but also the “whole team” of health care professionals and those who helped them, such as the people who cleaned the hospital rooms. “That resiliency and collaboration helped us prevent burnout and keep going,” she said.

Sister Xiomara said that the experience of death of the patient and the families depends on the circumstances and on the culture of the people involved. Sister Xiomara was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, a community-oriented society with close families and communities. “For us, death is part of life,” she said. In the United States, “many people live in denial, but the truth is: if you are alive, you will die.”

As a chaplain, Sister Xiomara has advice on how to think about death. “Try to make peace with yourself first,” she said. “Then make your peace with God.” She pointed to the importance of living a good life to prepare for death. “I think the important thing is to live life in the present and be the best human being you can be,” she said. “Try to live in peace, to make peace, to build peace, and to live authentically. Try to do things that give life. That is all you can take with you.”

Read the entire interview, published in the November 2022 issue of U.S. Catholic, Vol. 87, No. 11.

October 12, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – Sister Elise D. García, OP, now Prioress of the Adrian Dominican Congregation, reflects in an article in The National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report on her three years of service in the presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

The LCWR is an association of about 1,350 elected leaders representing about 80% of the women religious in the United States. As General Councilor for the Adrian Dominican Sisters from 2016 to 2022, Sister Elise also was a member of the LCWR. She was elected as President-elect during the LCWR’s 2019 assembly and formally became President during the 2020 Assembly and Past-President during the 2021 Assembly.

In her retrospective, Sister Elise looks back on the “hinge years” of the early 2020s that saw such calamities as the COVID-19 pandemic; the police murder of George Floyd and the accompanying focus on racism and white supremacy in the United States; the insurrection at the nation’s Capital in January 2021; global “climate chaos” that included floods, droughts, and forest fires; and Russia’s war against Ukraine. She also details the LCWR’s responses to these crises.

“We are in a make-or-break decade of preventing catastrophic global warming for generations to come,” Sister Elise writes. “We face the urgent task of dismantling threats to democracy and the evil of white supremacy that are intertwined in such deadly combustion. … All call for a movement toward right relationship with one another and our Earth community – for loving one another and our Earth home as God loves us.”

Read Sister Elise’s full retrospective.

Feature photo: Sister Elise D. García, OP, delivers her presidential address for the 2021 Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) Assembly in August 2021. Her address was recorded in July for the August 2021 virtual assembly.