What's Happening

By Sister Nancy Jurecki, OP

February 12, 2025, Angeles City, Pampanga, the Philippines – Ever since the Dominican Sisters of the Our Lady of Remedies Congregation, based in Pampanga, the Philippines, merged with the Adrian Dominican Sisters in November 2011, the Sisters in both countries have sought ways to get to know one another and to experience one another’s culture and country. Recently, an exchange was initiated in which Sister Nancy Jurecki, OP, was to spend about eight months in the Philippines and Sister Abegail Santos, OP, was to spend about three months in the United States. Below is Sister Nancy’s reflection on her time in the Philippines. 

Since having met the late Sister Zenaida “Zenny” Nacpil, OP, 20 or more years ago, I have wanted to meet the good Sisters she spoke so lovingly about. My dream was fulfilled with the opportunity I have been afforded to spend time with our Sisters in the Philippines.

I left for the Philippines on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7, 2024, having received a blessing from our Sisters at the Motherhouse in Adrian, Michigan. For the past several months, I have been living with 13 of our Sisters who reside at the Adrian Dominican House of Remedies, the Chapter House in Angeles City. Another 21 Sisters are scattered throughout San Fernando and San Jose Dioceses, sharing faith and life with the people through, essentially, teaching and social action ministries. I have already visited a number of our Sisters in their ministries and hope to be with them all before returning home in early June.

My days are fairly routine. I wake early for a morning walk to beat the heat. Sister Marlene Villar, OP, is faithful in walking with me. Prayer begins in the community chapel at 6:00 a.m. Through the miracle of technology, the Sisters join our Dominican brothers at the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag for office and morning Mass. 

After breakfast, I walk to the Dominican School, comprised of two well-kept buildings. A covered court in the process of construction separates the convent from the school. I am tasked with helping Sister Arsenia Marie “Seny” Puno, OP, in the Guidance Office in the morning. At 80-plus years, Sister Seny serves as both Head of School and guidance counselor. After lunch, I tutor a second grader who has learning disabilities. The day ends with dinner and prayer.

The Sisters have been very good to me in introducing me to their country and their culture. I am not tied to my little ministries but am encouraged to respond to invitations that open me to numerous locations and experiences. I have attended ordinations, festivals, parties, and funerals. To date, I have visited several of the Sisters in their communities and/or ministry sites.

I will have many stories to share by the time I go home. A thrill for me, early on, was visiting Holy Rosary School in Tala, near Manila. This school was started by a Dominican priest more than 70 years ago with much support from our Sisters over the past 50 or so years. Originally, the school served impoverished children and families affected by Hansen’s disease. 

Thanks be to God, the scourge of leprosy no longer affects the community, but poverty certainly does. While at an anniversary celebration there, I met with “scholars” attending college on scholarships provided by monies we collect during Mission Appeals at parishes in the United States. The Holy Rosary School students gifted me with a box of individually written thank you notes and presented me with a necklace they had created from dried leaves, shells, and the emblem of their school.

Another memory planted deep within my soul was spending New Year’s Day with Sister Seny’s family in Lubao. Sister Seny’s family now resides in a resettlement village, having lost everything under the ashes of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The openness, hospitality, and generosity of people who have virtually nothing was humbling. Sister Seny’s family truly welcomed the stranger and allowed me insight into the truly important “things” in life: faith, family, and fun.

I’ve told the Sisters that, as I see it, they do two things very well: play and pray. Christmas was a perfect example. Advent is briefly interrupted in the Philippines by a tradition of Simbang Gabi. Nine days before Christmas, culminating on Christmas Eve, a Mass with all the songs, smells, bells, and prayers associated with Christmas is celebrated in the evening or during the early hours of the morning. No matter the hour, each day, the churches are packed.

The playfulness of the Sisters was on display, at its finest, during the visit by some of our leadership early in December and again on Christmas Eve when, each time, all the Sisters gathered to party ... and parties they were! The Sisters shared their customs, good food, and lots of laughter.

Church is central to the lives of the Filipino people. Our Sisters have done a marvelous job embedding themselves into the life of the Church both during worship and in the streets. The Adrian Dominican Sisters are well recognized and very much respected by the people. The support that the Sisters receive locally for their various projects is a testimony to the regard in which they are held. For example, outreach to indigenous and marginalized people is made possible, certainly by help from the Congregation, but equally as important through the assistance they receive from friendships that they have cultivated locally. 

One of my pleasures has been reading and rereading A Journey of Faith: Walking with God’s People. The book is a history of the foundation and works of the Sisters of Our Lady of Remedies, written for their 50th Anniversary. The people and places in the book take on life as I read about them, having first-hand experiences with which to relate. 

Now, as the Sisters approach the 60th anniversary of their founding, I can affirm words noted in that book as having been written by Sister Carol Johannes, OP, after a visit in 1981. Sister Carol was impressed by the “simplicity, warmth, intelligence, ministerial proficiency, and profound commitment to the mission of Jesus” by the Sisters – as am I.
 

Caption for above feature photo: Sister Nancy Jurecki, OP, center, and Sisters from Our Lady of Remedies Mission Chapter serve in a Christmas outreach to children with disabilities.

January 17, 2025, Southfield, Michigan – Three Adrian Dominican Sisters participated last month in a meeting of the Gamaliel Nuns’ Caucus, a coalition of religious Catholic Sisters and lay community organizers working together to bring about “transformative justice” in society. 

Sisters Cheryl Liske, OP, Xiomara Méndez-Hernandez, OP, and Janice Brown, OP, participated in the afternoon session of the Nuns’ Caucus, held at the end of the Fifth Biennial Race and Power Summit. The summit drew affiliates and leaders of the Gamaliel Network, along with invited allies and partners, to the three-day event. The theme was “A Pivotal Moment in Time: Resistance, Persistence, Insistence.”

Founded in 1989, the Gamaliel Network trains community and faith leaders “in building political power and creating organizations that unite people of diverse faiths and races” in work for justice. The network is made up of 44 affiliates and state offices in seven states. 

Participating in the Nuns’ Caucus meeting were sisters and organizers who attended the Race and Power Summit and others who participated via Zoom.

Sister Theresa Keller, FSPA, of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, opened the meeting by explaining that the Nuns’ Caucus began about two years ago with a letter of intent. In their work for justice, the Sisters intersect with community organizers represented by Gamaliel. This intersection led to the proposal for a more formal network of sisters and community organizers within Gamaliel.  

“Historically, many Catholic religious sisters came to this country to serve the many immigrant communities,” said Sister Cheryl, a community organizer who served Gamaliel as National Training Director and a senior trainer. “They supported the common good by building social infrastructure,” such as hospitals, schools, and universities. 

In spite of the good that Catholic sisters brought to the United States, Sister Cheryl admitted that in many places, sisters were “complicit in racism and segregation. We lament in regard to such things as not being significant voices,” she said.

Sister Cheryl pointed to NETWORK, a social justice lobby formed by Catholic sisters about 50 years ago to serve as a voice for people suffering from poverty or other forms of injustice. “We renew our efforts to support the common good,” she said. “Today’s sisters, rooted in the Gospel and ancient practices, persist with our call for transformative justice inside and outside the Church structures.”

Sister Xiomara, a native of the Dominican Republic and Executive Director of the Dominican Sisters Conference, related her own experience of racism when she came to the United States to enter the Adrian Dominican Congregation. She expected the people of the United States to be good people because of her experience with the Adrian Dominican Sisters who ministered in her country. 

“I was privileged in my country because I was a light color,” she said, but she experienced the biases of some people in the United States. “I was feeling less and less and didn’t know why.” She learned that she was experiencing racism. 

Sister Xiomara educated herself on the biases in the United States and became involved in the Congregation’s efforts to root out racist attitudes. In its Toward Communion Circle created to work towards the Congregation’s 2016 Enactment on Racism and Diversity, “we wanted to undo racism among us to raise diversity,” she said. “We wrestled a lot, and some of the stories were painful.”

Sister Xiomara cited the efforts of the Revolutionary Love Project with its three practices: See no stranger; love others, but first tend to your own wounds and fears; and adapt the practice of a midwife: push for new life. The project was founded by Valarie Kaur, a civil rights leader, lawyer, educator, activist, and author.

“I refuse to see myself as a victim,” Sister Xiomara said. “I want to see all of us as a beautiful creation of God. I want to see myself as more than a survivor but a thriver.”

Sister Janice spoke of prayer as a basis for religious life. “Prayer is where we find our ground, where I open myself to a greater world,” she said. Contemplation “is a time to step aside and be with God. You stop and contemplate and just let that sink in … bringing you to a higher level of consciousness.”

Study is also an important part of the Dominican tradition and the tradition of other congregations as well, Sister Janice said. It involves understanding the world and discerning where God is and what God plans for us. 

Prayer and study bring us to spiritual activism, “the act of transforming oneself,” Sister Janice said. “Prayer is a breath of life that holds us as a community and as a unique child of God. It brings us back to the essence of who we are and whose we are.”   

The meeting concluded with a discussion on how participants were sustained by prayer and their mission, and on ways that community organizers and Sisters can work together and learn from one another. 
 

Caption for above feature photo: From left: Sister Cheryl Liske, OP, Sister Xiomara Méndez-Fernandez, OP, and Sister Janice Brown, OP.