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July 7, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – In a historic General Chapter, the Adrian Dominican Sisters elected their next Prioress and General Council and set the direction for the next six years.
Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, Prioress, formally opened the Congregation’s 19th General Chapter, held June 27 to July 2, 2022, in the Marriott Chicago O’Hare Hotel. The dates and place of General Chapter 2022 were an unprecedented departure from the Congregation’s practice of meeting in Chapter in February at the Motherhouse in Adrian. The changes were made to keep the Sisters who reside at the Motherhouse – as well as the Delegates – as safe as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chapter’s 125 Delegates elected a Prioress and General Council to lead the Congregation through June 30, 2028. They will formally take office in October.
Sister Elise D. García, OP, Prioress-elect, served as Communications Director for the Adrian Dominican Sisters from 2011 until her election to the General Council in 2016. With Sister Carol Coston, OP, she co-founded and co-directed Santuario Sisterfarm, an ecology center in Texas dedicated to cultivating biodiversity and cultural diversity.
Sister Lorraine Réaume, OP, Vicaress/General Councilor-elect, recently completed her ministry as Co-director of the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate, where U.S.-based congregations of Dominican Sisters send their novices for formation in religious life. Sister Lorraine served as Pastoral Associate for Hispanic Ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Anchorage, Alaska, and as Pastoral Associate at Ste. Anne de Detroit, a largely Hispanic parish.
Sister Janice Brown, OP, General Councilor-elect, served in the Detroit-metro region for more than 15 years as Executive Director of two of the Congregation’s literacy centers, Dominican Literacy Center and Siena Literacy Center. Before entering the Congregation in 2003, she was a single mother, raising her daughter and working in banking and finance. She was an Adrian Dominican Associate and, after her daughter lived on her own, felt called to religious life.
Sister Bibiana “Bless” Colasito, OP, General Councilor-elect, was born in the Leyte Province of the Philippines and joined the Dominican Congregation of Our Lady of Remedies in Pampanga, the Philippines, in 2000. That congregation merged with the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 2011. Sister Bless has been involved in school administration and social action, currently serving as Head of the Commission on Family and Life for the Diocese of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, Philippines.
Sister Corinne Sanders, OP, General Councilor-elect, serves as Director of the Office of Sustainability for the Adrian Dominican Sisters and assists the Office of Immigration Services as a paralegal. Before her election to the General Council in 2010, she was principal of Rosarian Academy, sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters and located in West Palm Beach, Florida. She also served as Director of Mission and Ministry at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida, and as Director of Formation for the Congregation.
The General Council-elect succeeds Sisters Patricia Siemen, OP, Prioress; Mary Margaret Pachucki, OP, Vicaress and General Councilor; Frances Nadolny, OP, Administrator and General Councilor; and Patricia Harvat, OP, and Elise D. García, OP, General Councilors.
The General Chapter Delegates also approved five Enactments to set the Congregation’s ministerial direction for the next six years. The Enactments were formulated from issues and concerns raised by Sisters and Associates during a virtual Congregational assembly in October 2021 and by groups of Sisters and Associates who submitted issues and action plans in November and December.
The Enactments are:
Diversity: “Challenged by the Gospel and outraged by systems that oppress, dehumanize and deny the image of God in each of us and Earth community, we commit to: acknowledge and repent of our complicity in the divisions prevalent in our church and our world; act to dismantle unjust systems; and build the beloved community in which everyone is cared for, absent of poverty, hunger, and hate.”
Dominican Vowed Life: “We are passionately committed to vowed Dominican life. Trusting in the Spirit and embracing the gift of our charism, we invite women to join us in our call to preach the Gospel.”
Spirituality: “Living in a time of global chaos and Paschal hope, and rooted in our Dominican tradition, we recognize our spiritual longings and those of the world. We commit to deepening our spirituality, attending to the evolutionary awakening of human consciousness and living into the transformation to which we are called both personally and communally.”
Sustainability/Laudato Si’: “Affirming the urgent need to live in right relationship with Earth community, we commit to address the cry of Earth and the cry of those who are poor by joining the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.” Based on a 2015 letter by Pope Francis on Earth, our Common Home, the Laudato Si’ Action Platform is a seven-year plan in which Catholic organizations such as parishes, dioceses, schools, and religious communities commit to working toward seven sustainability goals to heal Earth and work against global climate change.
Women: “Valuing human dignity, and aware of the injustice of patriarchy which maintains the subordinate status of women and girls throughout the world, we strive to attain gender equality and women’s full and equal participation and decision making in church and society.
June 14, 2022, New Haven, Connecticut – Sister Katherine Frazier, OP, newly named Director of the Dominican Youth Movement (DYM), hopes in her new position to continue to foster the bonds of the Dominican family across North America – and to help the Dominican family to engage with its youngest members.
Begun in 2015, the DYM brought together five programs under one umbrella to be more effective in outreach to more than 4,000 young people from high school through young adult years. Individual programs include:
Youth Preaching Workshops, weekend experiences which introduce high school-age youth to the Dominicans and to the idea of preaching the Word;
Dominican High Schools Preaching Conference, a week-long experience that teaches representative students from Dominican high schools how to preach with their lives;
Dominican College Preaching in Action Conference, an annual conference for students from Dominican colleges and universities;
Dominican Young Adults USA, an organization of chapters – many based in Dominican colleges and universities – that give young adults the opportunity to explore Dominican life; and
Dominican houses of hospitality, places where young adults can live in intentional community with vowed Dominicans and Associates.
Sister Katherine succeeds Sister Gina Fleming, OP, a Dominican Sister of Amityville, and will spend time with her in August to learn about the ministry. Much of Sister Katherine’s ministry will be remote, and she is discerning where to live that would best serve the DYM.
“First and foremost, I hope that we’ll be able to continue to foster those bonds of the Dominican family across the country among our institutions,” Sister Katherine said. “How can we really introduce young people to the breadth of the Dominican Order – whether nuns or Sisters or laity or Associates – really giving them a glimpse of how diverse it is and how they fit in as people who have been formed with these same ideals?”
Sister Katherine sees the importance of finding where the young Dominicans are and going to them. “My experience of young people, especially high school students, is they don’t really have control over their schedule – so how are we going to them?” She hopes to work with the Dominican family in its outreach to the younger people who feel called to the Dominican Charism.
“I know this is not a ministry where I can do everything by myself,” she said. “I want the larger Dominican family to provide opportunity to engage with young people … This is something I’m excited about: working on behalf of all the Dominicans across the United States.”
Many members of the Dominican family have reached out through their involvement with the high school and college conferences. Sister Katherine has been a part of both as a volunteer and as an adult leader from Regina Dominican High School, an all-girls school sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters and located in Wilmette, Illinois. One of the practices at the high school conference, she said, is for students and adults from each school to create an action plan – ideas for bringing their experience of the Dominican spirituality to their schools during the next school year.
The question, Sister Katherine said, is how to continue to engage the high school and college students after their experiences at the conferences. The Regina Dominican students “had such a wonderful experience at the conference that they were wondering how they could find ways to capture that excitement so they could have that energizing experience at their school,” she said. “That is something we can look into. How can we create experiences for students who have been to the conference to engage with others who are also being formed in that Dominican Charism?”
Sister Katherine pointed to other examples of ways that Dominicans can reach out to young people. During her years of ministry at Regina Dominican High School, she organized a pen pal program between the school’s homerooms and the Sisters who had once ministered at the school. But, she added, engaging with young people is as simple as “showing up at a parish church and being willing to talk to the young people. Those are things that many of us are capable of doing.”
Sister Katherine has learned much from her work with young people. “Young people bring a different perspective,” she said. “They’ll ask a difficult question – ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ – and help you to engage with who we are on a deeper level. I think that is the gift that I have experienced working with young people, as well as the opportunity to be around their energy, to learn about their sense of humor and what gets them excited and helps them to be passionate.”
She hopes to bring the Dominican family and the younger Dominicans together, perhaps through presentations in which Dominican Sisters speak to the youth about their ministries, how they were called, or their relationship with God. “If I can find ways of bringing the experience of older Sisters to people who are still trying to wrestle with those decisions, that would help to bridge the gap,” she said.
Feature photo: Sister Katherine Frazier, OP, right, with Regina Dominican High School’s Dominican Preachers, students who attended the Dominican High Schools Preaching Conference. File Photo, Courtesy of Regina Dominican High School