A Year in Review: 2022
Taking a glance backward at the end of a calendar year has become traditional-and for us, too. We hope you enjoy savoring our joys and remembering the sorrows and challenges of 2022 in equal measure. Our Top Six Our big news in 2022 was the celebration of the 150th anniversary of our founding. We began the celebrating on August 19, 2022, on the 149th anniversary-and will continue to celebrate through August 19, 2023. Here’s an updated calendar of events […]
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The Way of the Cross in Myanmar
It may seem counterintuitive to present a Way of the Cross while we are still in the Christmas season. For our Dominican family in Myanmar, and for thousands of Myanmar’s citizens, Christmas has not not put an end to the brutal violence and displacement. With this final post of Dominican Month of Peace, we provide a moving version of Jesus’ passion accompanied by images from the conflict in Myanmar, and ask you to remember the people of this […]
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Sister M. Alberta Juggles Techno wizardry, Ministry, and Family Care
Above: Sister M. Alberta, left, and her sister, Sister M. Rene, who died in 2016. Listen carefully and you will hear Sister M. Alberta mention the reason she asked to move from her ministry as principal at Alleman High School in Rock Island, Ill., closer to her family in Morgan County. She mentions her sister, Marianne, who was as that time raising teenagers and caring for their aging parents. The move would allow her to be close enough […]
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Christmas blessings from the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois
Dear Friends, We greet this Christmas Season with the honest recognition that our hearts are filled with lament, gratitude, and hope. Lament as we join Earth and her people calling for systemic change to heal the suffering found in our shared global community. Gratitude as we recognize the goodness in all of creation that is restorative, renewing, and resurrected. Hope as we deepen our relationship with the One whose incarnational presence is a forever promise. Together, may we celebrate with deep joy this […]
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“It is not safe anywhere”—Stories from the Dominican Family in Myanmar
On an early December morning in Central Illinois, 100 Dominicans from around the globe were virtually to hear from their Dominican brothers and sisters in Myanmar. By now accustomed to the standard operation of such electronic gatherings, while the speakers addressed the causes of conflict and enumerated the tragedies of displacement, mass executions, and institutional collapse in Myanmar since the military coup there in February, participants contributed in chat. As it drew on toward night in Myanmar, one […]
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Late on Holy Days!
Listen to Sister M. Alberta reminisce about the circumstances that brought her parents together, and what it meant to be the only Catholic family in the public school in rural Morgan County. It was during Sister M. Alberta’s early days in religious life that our sisters began an innovative program to address the challenge of faith formation for children living in rural areas. In 1950 the first of four Confraternity of Christian Doctrine Centers opened in Arcola, Ill. […]
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The Power of Education, Spirituality, and Psychological Support In Myanmar
The Impact of COVID on Education Schools were closed in 2020 due to spreading of COVID19. After seizing power, the military junta tried to open schools in 2021 but was not successful because most of the teachers refused to collaborate with them and students didn’t enroll for classes. This year too, though the military government opened the schools, many students refused to attend and teachers refused to collaborate. At this moment, home schooling and online classes are available […]
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“Thank you for your continual prayers”: Unrest in Peru leads to death, destabilization
Sister Mila Díaz Solano, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield’s leadership team, provided an update for the sisters and associates on the difficult situation in Peru, her home nation and a place of ministry for the congregation since 1965. “As of today (December 14), seven people have died due to the demonstrations and more than a hundred have been injured,” she wrote, saying that in 14 of Peru’s 25 regions people have blocked the highways in […]
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