This easy-to-read book has ten chapters, each telling the story of a different religious sister who is changing the world and the souls she encounters. Wall Street contributor and author, Jo Piazza, spent months interviewing and learning about the nuns she wrote about. A self-proclaimed non-religious woman, Piazza sums up her experiences with these religious sisters, “I may not believe in God but I believe in nuns.”
Piazza writes about Sr. Megan Rice who broke into a National Security complex to damage nuclear weapons. She details the beginning of Sr. Simone Campbell’s Nuns on the Bus ministry. She met a Sister who keeps her location undisclosed because of her work with victims of human trafficking. She writes of nuns who run Ironman triathlons, use their finances to lobby in shareholders meetings, and who work for equality in the government and the Church.
These ten sisters have a variety of ministries, live in different parts of the country and come from different religious communities. But they all feel called by God to be a Sister and to be doing the work they are doing. They each share how their daily prayer brings them peace in a world of violence.
The stories emphasized the dual role of a nun – to be compassionate and to be an agitator. Each story showed a woman who cared deeply for others and for that reason, was willing to go to extreme lengths to show that compassion. This is who nuns are today. Nuns are the modern-day Jesus in the temple, overturning the tables of corruption and injustice, all for the glory of God!
Honestly, this is who the Sisters of the Precious Blood are too. Chapters could have been written about Sisters Donna Liette and Carolyn Hoying discussing the work they do on the south side of Chicago or Sisters Terry Walter, Marifé Hellman and Joyce Kahle and what they do for the women in Guatemala. Our Sisters volunteer in schools in low income neighborhoods, in prisons and with the poor. As a vocation minister, I found this to be a great book to pass along to someone when they ask “Why would someone want to be a nun today?” This books illustrates the answer: “to change the world.”
By Jenna Legg
Assembly Directive: Continue to articulate and integrate our Spirituality in our sharing among ourselves and with others.