What's Happening

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.

October 12, 2022, Seattle, Washington – Mercy Housing Northwest, based in Seattle, is celebrating 30 years of making a difference in the lives of individuals and families by offering them access to affordable housing.

Sister Judy Byron, OP

Mercy Housing Northwest began in 1990 with a meeting of 80 Sisters who wanted to address the issue of homelessness – especially when they learned that nearly a third of the people in the area who were homeless were children. The Edmonds Dominican Sisters – who merged with the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 2003 – were among four of the original founding communities in the Seattle area who started the organization that became Mercy Housing Northwest.

“To me, the best part is the kids,” Sister Judy Byron, OP, told The Northwest Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Seattle. “If we could give kids a stable home, they could have a good life.” 

Most of the housing properties operated by Mercy Housing Northwest give additional help to families through services such as housing and financial stability, health and wellness, out-of-school programming for the children, and community involvement – which are “the anchors for the folks [who] live there,” Sister Judy said.

Read the entire article by Brenda Sexton in The Northwest Catholic. 

Feature photo: An architect’s rendering of Cedar Crossing, a 254-apartment housing development through a partnership between Bellwether Housing and Mercy Housing Northwest. Photo Courtesy of Mercy Housing Northwest