catholic sister

You may notice that many Catholic sisters and nuns have the name “Mary” included in some form in their religious name. In a recent edition of our IHM Archives News (May 2010), our intrepid archivist Donna Westley looked at this custom in the IHM tradition. (Today we use our baptismal names as our religious names so “Mary” or its derivations are present only if it was originally part of one’s baptismal name). Here’s some of that article along with additional details I gleaned from my email conversation with Donna.

Today’s Nunday photo is of Sister Barbara Valuckas, SSND. As you might guess from the photo, Sister Barbara has a bit of broadcasting in her background. 

A group of us were chatting on Facebook that it would have been great if Oprah had shared the story of other ways of living religious life on her February 9th show. So, we decided to draft an Open Letter to Oprah from younger women religious.

Tune in this morning for the Oprah Show which features Oprah Winfrey chatting with some of the Dominican Sisters of Mary of Ann Arbor, Michigan and Lisa Ling’s experience visiting their “real-life nunnery”. It airs at 9 a.m. CST on ABC.