2016 Year in Review

2016 Loretto Year in Review Anniversaries

Loretto International

Awards & Recognitions Peace & Justice

Care for the Earth

Reconnection, Renovation & Renewal

Loretto Class of 1966 gathered to toast their 50th anniversary as classmates

Anniversaries Loretto members marked milestone anniversaries in 2016

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he Loretto Class of 1966 gathered at the Motherhouse to celebrate their half-century anniversary. In 1966 two groups of postulants were received into Loretto’s novitiate. In 2016, after half a lifetime, seven of the Class of 1966 had a reunion in May. From left are Sandy Tokarski, Mary Helen Sandoval CoL, Marie Ego SL, Linda Spollen, Diane Elstein, Mary Beth Reese and Sue Charmley SL.

Sue Charmley (left) and Marie Ego

Awards & Recognitions

V.A. Driscoll (left) and Theresa Louise Wiseman

Loretto Community members honored for extraordinary service

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n 2016, several organizations outside the Loretto Community recognized Loretto members for extraordinary service in their chosen fields:

Rosalie Marie Phillips

Angelus Caron

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ight Loretto women celebrated their Jubilees in 2016, and not just the usual Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees. In 2016 the Community boasted of an Emerald Jubilarian (85 years in Loretto) and a Pearl Jubilarian (80 years in Loretto! Our 2016 Jubilarians include: Emerald (85th): Rosalie Marie Phillips SL Pearl (80th): Angelus Caron SL

Kim Klein

Mary Louise Beutner SL, Ph.D.: Lumen Christi Outstanding Faculty Award given to Sister Beutner posthumously by The Spirit of Loretto Committee founded to keep the spirit of Loretto Heights College alive at Regis University, Denver.

Connie Newton

Diamond (75th): Virginia Ann “V.A.” Driscoll SL Diamond (75th): Theresa Louise Wiseman SL

Mary Louise Beutner

Golden (50th): Susan Charmley SL Golden (50th): Marie Ego SL

Karen Cassidy CoL: Received prestigious Bell Award for establishing Hildegarde House in Louisville, Ky., a home offering quality end-of-life care for people who are homeless and alone.

Sally Dunne CoL: Named Project Director for Hiltonfunded U.N. initiative by a group of NGOs called the Religious at the United Nations.

Silver (25th): Kim Klein CoL Silver (25th): Connie Newton SL

Sally Dunne

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Karen Cassidy

Mary Catherine Rabbitt

Mary Catherine Rabbitt SL: Retired from practice at Disability Law Colorado as an attorney in elder law, and after a a lifetime of of social advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised.

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Professor Jean East CoL, PhD: Received the Robin Morgan Outstanding Woman Award for Faculty 2016 at the University of Denver’s Annual Women’s Conference.

Maureen Fiedler SL: Maureen and her team received the Wilbur award for “Interfaith Voices,” the long-running public radio program broadcasting weekly from Washington, D.C. Mary Nelle Gage SL: Received the Distinguished Alumna Award by The Spirit of Loretto Committee.

Lydia Peña SL: Inducted into the 2016 Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.

Care for the Earth

Elisa Rodriguez SL: Recognized for years of community social work with the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization (EPISO).

Helen Santamaria SL: Inducted into El Paso Women’s Hall of Fame under the auspices of the El Paso Commission for Women.

Loretto supports Earth Day 2016

Maureen McCormack SL: Received the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado Award.

EarthLinks 20th Anniversary

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s it does each year, the Loretto Community stood in solidarity with Earth Day 2016 on April 22. Since the national Earth Day movement began in 1970, 47 years have passed, and supporters are reaching the goal of “3 million acts of green.”

Jean East

Lydia Peña

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n 1996 Bette Ann Jaster OP and Cathy Mueller SL founded EarthLinks, a nonprofit organization in downtown Denver, to form connections (or links) among homeless, low-income people and with Earth for their mutual benefit. In 2016 EarthLinks was 20 years old and going strong.

Maureen Fiedler, left

LEN’s 25th Anniversary

Cathy Mueller (left) and Bette Ann Jaster

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Elisa Rodriguez, second from left Mary Nelle Gage, center, with award

oretto Earth Network 25th Anniversary Issue (LEN) celeSummer 2016 Vol. 24, No. 2 brated its 25th anniversary in August with a gathering at the Denver Loretto Center. To mark the occasion, LEN published a 25th anniversary edition of Loretto Earth Network News, their wellloved quarterly newsletter, which is available to any interested party on Loretto’s public website. Visit www.lorettocommunity.org.

LENN Summer 1994

Maureen McCormack, left

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Helen Santamaria, center, with award

Participants create Earthfriendly items.

Volunteers work in EarthLinks’ Peace Garden.

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Loretto members supported Dakota Pipeline Protest in body and spirit

Budding beekeepers keep bizzy buzzing around the ‘Glory Bee Project’

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oretto at the U.N. was a major sponsor of a Loretto Community delegation to Standing Rock, N.D., site of the Dakota Pipeline Protest, during Thanksgiving week.

Top left, from left: Ashley May, a Nerinx Hall teacher and Loretto Circle member; Loretto friends Aaron McMullin, Brian O’Shaughnessy and Colin Hughes; Roberta Hudlow SL; and Ariana Alveraez, Loretto Volunteer and assistant NGO representative for the Loretto Community at the United Nations. The group took supplies, money and a letter of solidarity from Loretto at the U.N. Glory Bee care team, from left: Father Michael Casagram, Sue Charmley SL, Alicia Ramirez SL, Susan Classen CoL and Co-member-in-process Julie Popham.

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t’s not all milk and honey, you know. God said to Adam, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” ... and the honey to spread on it! In that spirit, Italian honeybees — 24,000 of them — arrived in shipping containers from Frankfort, Ky., April 15, marking the real start of the Glory Bee Project at Loretto Motherhouse, Nerinx, Ky. Four eager, novice beekeepers had been working for months preparing for the bees. Known as the Glory Bee

Father Michael Casagram with no protective garb, far right, demonstrates how to safely transfer new bees into new hives.

The rest of the care team observe and learn.

The delegation camped for three days at Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock in solidarity with Water Protectors who were there to advocate for clean water preservation.

Should the pipeline go through, the water system would be subject to possible oil leaks with devastating consequences to the ecosystem.

Loretto International

care team, Sue Charmley, Alicia Ramirez, Susan Classen and Julie Popham worked with Father Michael Casagram, a monk at nearby Abbey of Gethsamane, who has kept bees and gathered honey for more than 50 years. Under his tutelage, and after much study, the Glory Bee care team buzzed around two hives on the Motherhouse plantation learning the careful, pleasant work of tending honeybees.

Pakistani Sisters of Loretto relocate to Lahore

Loretto Motherhouse considers nature preserve cemetery

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subcommittee of the Farm and Land Management Committee searched in 2016 for a “special forested niches” on the Motherhouse property or other land where natural — or “green” —burials could take place.

Interest in natural burial has been high at the Motherhouse for the past six years. Kathleen Vonderhaar SL, a member of the subcommittee, said that national interest has recently spiked across the country. Work continues on the idea of setting aside a permanent, protected woodland space on Motherhouse property to provide a natural setting for such burials.

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n 2016 the three Pakistani Sisters of Loretto — Nasreen and Maria Daniel and Samina Iqbal — moved from their seven-year mission in Faisalabad to the city of Lahore, Pakistan, directly east of Faisalabad and close to the Indian border. They have rooms within the former John of God Sisters’ complex. They teach the local children to read and work with women on literacy and solar technology with the goal of bringing light and a cooling fan to each of their homes.

Largest student delegation attends United Nations CSW

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n March, Loretto at the U.N. hosted its largest-ever delegation to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. Fifty Loretto Community members and students from Loretto schools and Loretto Volunteers converged on the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan to attend CSW’s 60th session.

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World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul opens doors, minds

Loretto Co-member aides Haitians after Hurricane Matthew

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Posing outside the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul were, from left, Mohamad, Ali, Theresa Kubasak CoL, Wafaa Abu Elula and Teresa Blumenstein.

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o-member Theresa Kubasak and Loretto at the U.N. intern Teresa Blumenstein traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, last summer for The World Humanitarian Summit 2016.

In a session sponsored by the Loretto Community and the U.N. NGO Committee on Migration, three young adult Syrian refugees shared their personal writings. Kubasak facilitated the session where Wafaa, Ali and Mohamad shared their work. They are students from Ad Dar, a center

for Syrian and Palestinian-Syrian refugees in Istanbul, and members of Writers’ Workshop. Happily all three of these student refugees are now attending schools in the United States: Mohamad at a Quaker high school in Philadelphia, Ali at Lewis University in Illinois, and Wafaa Abu Elul at Webster University. She is living at the St. Louis Loretto Center while studying at Webster.

Delegates focus on immigration issues during Nogales border trip

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he annual School of Americas Watch in Fort Benning, Ga., at which Loretto members have long participated, was shifted this year to Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Mexico, according to the Loretto Latin American/Caribbean Committee and Loretto Peace Committee. Fourteen Loretto delegates joined many others in Nogales to highlight the causes of Latin American migration, violence and poverty.

A candlelight vigil at the Eloy Detention Center in the mid-

dle of the desert raised awareness about U.S. immigration policies. A binational march on both sides of the Nogales border moved participants. In addition, Pat Delgado and Alicia Ramirez SL attended Encuentro de las Hermanas at El Comedor, convened by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Mexican sisters’ conference on the Mexican side of Nogales where deportees received food and some assistance to travel home.

Co-members Stacy Leard (left) and Mary Jean Friel at a detention center vigil during Nogales trip.

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arbara Wander CoL continued her many years’ work with the Little Sisters of Saint Therese in Haiti before and after Hurricane Matthew laid waste to much of that tiny nation in October. She had been in Haiti and returned to the United States just one day before the hurricane struck.

She was in immediate contact with the Little Sisters and was able to raise money, equipment and assistance for the many poor whom the Little Sisters serve in 42 missions across that country. Full details of this harrowing story are found in Loretto Magazine, Winter 2016-2017, and the December edition of Interchange.

A building on the Little Sisters’ Motherhouse campus in Haiti was destroyed by Hurricane Matthew.

Loretto-Ghana Sister Community representatives visit Motherhouse

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he Loretto-Ghana Sister Community Committee joined with two Daughters of the Most Blessed Trinity (FST) Sisters at the Kentucky Motherhouse for four days of reflection and growth. Barbara Roche SL facilitated the sessions.

“We all wanted to go deeper in our connection, to work together in this relationships as equals and to draft a mission statement of who we are as distinct sister communities,” wrote Co-member Lillian Moskeland in the December 2016 edition of Interchange.

Leaders of the Loretto-Ghana Sister Community enjoy time at Loretto Motherhouse in 2016.

Co-member studies hunger, urban farming inVenezuela with LACC

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oretto Co-member Rox Monterastelli, also a member of the Loretto Latin America/Caribbean Committee, joined with the Task Force of the Americas delegation this summer to meet women who are “confronting economic war by empowering a nation,” said Monterastelli. Women are directing the new Venezuelan Urban Agricultural Ministry by starting seed-saver collectives and organizing cooperatives to process and distribute food equitably.

At bottom left, Rox Monterastelli CoL joins with other Task Force of the Americas delegation members in Venezuela.

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Loretto Circles revive, actively strive and thrive

Peace & Justice

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ifferent Loretto Circles gathered in different ways in 2016. In September, members of the Loretto Volunteer Program (LVP) reconnected with the Motherhouse Loretto Circle at a Labor Day retreat. Volunteers came from LVP years 2006 to 2016. Eighteen members of the Nerinx Hall Loretto Circle went on retreat Oct. 1 at Rockhaven Ecozoic Center near St. Louis (pictured at right). Roberta Hudlow SL, several Loretto Volunteers and Nerinx Hall faculty studied with facilitator Beth Blissman CoL as she explored “Fired Up to Connect with Earth.”

Loretto marches in step with Martin Luther King

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n 2016, for the 31st year, a contingent of Loretto members and friends joined with thousands of others to take part in the MLK “Marade” Jan. 18 in Denver. The annual Marade (march and parade) is held in memory of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the ideals for which he stood. Denver’s Marade is one of the largest MLK Day marches in the country, and 31 years ago Colorado was one of the first states to declare Martin Luther King Day as a holiday and celebration.

Reconnection, Renovation & Renewal Peace Committee acts to end gun violence, spread of nuclear weapons

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he Loretto Committee for Peace focused in 2016 on control of nuclear weapons and gun violence. The committee asked the Loretto Community to pray on the first Monday of every month to end gun violence. Committee members also represented Loretto in the protests against the NRA convention May 20 in Louisville, Ky. In addition, Committee members visited the United Nations 10 • 2016 Year in Review

“regularly,” working with many other groups in support of their nuclear protests particularly at Los Alamos and Livermore in August, said Mary Jean Friel CoL, a Peace Committee member. They have coordinated with other Loretto committees and joined with these members at the annual School of the Americas protest on the U.S.-Mexican border.

St. Louis Center residents and staff gather for closing ceremony

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embers and friends of the Loretto Community in St. Louis gathered at the St. Louis Center in Webster Groves, Mo., Dec. 8 to mark the Center’s closing.

Many memories of life at the Center, the House of Studies, and the many Loretto meetings held there were shared among the participants.

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Renovations brighten St. Joseph Church, Loretto Academy, El Paso

Motherhouse technology gets major upgrade from the wires up

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ver the spring and summer, Loretto Motherhouse Internet connections and infrastructure were improved to increase speed, reliability and basic connectivity. Thanks to all who have helped to bring these efforts to fruition.

Cupola BEFORE restoration

Cupola AFTER restoration Existing Motherhouse wiring when the new installation began.

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t. Joseph Church, at the heart of Loretto Academy, El Paso, Texas, reopened to the public April 25 on Loretto Founder’s Day. It had first opened in 1928, 88 years ago. Minor repairs and changes had been made in the interim, but not the full-scale renovation that started after Christmas Eve Mass, 2015. Shepherded by Loretto Academy President Buffy Boesen SL, planners began fundraising in 2012.

When work finally began, it was completed in under four months, including a repaired roof and marble floors, restored chandeliers and rafters, upgraded sound and lighting, new wiring, new confessionals, and artwork restored like new, and a fully restored and expanded pipe organ with 608 additional pipes to welcome worshippers.

A worker uses a diamond-tipped bit on a core drill to cut an access into the Infirmary boiler room.

The Little Theatre of Loretto Academy, El Paso, receives first comprehensive renovations in decades

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he Little Theatre of Loretto Academy in El Paso, Texas, was renovated in 2016. From the magnificent entrance doors, to the seats, floors, new dressing rooms, restrooms, 12 • 2016 Year in Review

air conditioning, curtains, sound and lighting systems to the restored ceiling, the Little Theatre proudly serves a new crop of student thespians, musicians and dancers.

New fiber-optic cables ready to connect to a patch panel.

New vertical conduit pipe and boxes were carefully installed in several historic buildings at Loretto Motherhouse.

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