New podcast explores how sisters can flourish

by Macie Capote

By Macie Capote
Clarion Herald

The Loyola Institute for Ministry’s Flourishing Sisterhood Project has been teaching, empowering and amplifying the voices of religious sisters in the Archdiocese of New Orleans for just over two years. To further pursue their goal of amplifying their voices, the project released the “Flourishing Sisterhood Podcast.”

The Flourishing Sisterhood Project is funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters Initiative, and the podcast is created by the Loyola Institute forMinistry and archived at the university’s Digital Humanities Archive.

Community collaboration

The project also offers courses to the sisters that eventually earn them a Loyola certificate in spirituality with a focus on spirituality and aging. Sixty-seven sisters are participating in the program.

Another aspect of the project is to collaborate with the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ Vicar for Religious to strengthen sisterhood within the archdiocese.

“The project is building on the close relationship
that Loyola has always had with religious congregations around the archdiocese,” said Tom Ryan, Loyola University New Orleans’ chaplain and the associate dean of the College of Nursing and Health. “Whether in the home or a parish or the world, we want people to see the sisters as inspirations to be agents of God’s love for all people and all creation.”

Power of storytelling

The podcast aims to explore what it means to “flourish” in religious life by telling the stories of Catholic religious sisters from the Gulf South. Ryan said he believes letting these sisters tell their stories through the mode of a podcast will aid not only the sisters but also the community as a whole.

“Telling stories helps in a number of different ways,” Ryan said. “First, it helps individuals articulate their story and find God’s presence in their lives. Secondly, telling stories helps other
people, their community and the congregation recognize the sister’s gifts and their legacy. Then, finally, it helps people recognize God at work through these amazing sisters.”

Claire Gallagher, project manager of Flourishing Sister-hood and religious studies professor for the Loyola Institute for Ministry, said the podcast, which has been over a year in the making, is a means to help sisters and communities understand the roles of women in the church, answer tough questions and evangelize.

“The state of religious life is changing,” Gallagher said. “Some congregations are getting smaller. Sisters are aging. We want to help them explore the question, ‘What does it look like to flourish even when situations in life change and we age?’ We’re interested
in storytelling as a mode of meaningful faith-sharing and evangelization, and we feel like a podcast is a really easy way to reach a lot of people, especially with the current culture where podcasts are really popular.”

Reaching the youth

Gallagher said they will be sharing the podcast with high schools and parishes with hopes that their episodes could be of use to vocations or religion classes.

“A lot of our sisters are doing a lot of work on the front lines for social justice, such as accompanying people who are incarcerated on death row,” she said. “We hit a lot of those kind of hot-topic issues that could be useful in the classroom.”

So far, the project has conducted 16 interviews and has plans to release a total of 30 episodes. With the help of Loyola history students who were taking a class called Documentary and Oral History, they were able to get the ball rolling.

“It was such a beautiful experience because many of the students did not have a lot of exposure to Catholicism, and I would say all of them had probably never spoken to a sister before,” Gallagher said. “And so, you know, they were a little bit nervous. It became this, like, really cool kind of intergenerational dialog on faith-sharing.”

After the class ended, the team decided to use funds from the grant to hire one of the students from the class, Leila Jones, who is now the lead editor for the podcast.

A whole new perspective

What was supposed to be a class that helped her finish out her credits, turned into an eye-opening and beautiful experience for Jones and the sisters.

Jones, a recent Loyola graduate from Denver, with a bachelor’s degree in history, had little to no exposure to religion or Catholic education, let alone religious sisters.

“I always had this stereotype of nuns – that they were really mean and a bit scary,” she laughed. “My view absolutely, completely changed after meeting these sisters. They’ve lived these incredible lives of serving their community and advocating for various justice causes.”

Jones and her peers each had the opportunity to interview two sisters for the class.

“I am pretty sure every single one of us who interviewed these sisters has changed their view on religious sisters and Catholicism as a whole,” she said. “I think it will have that effect on those who listen to it as well.”

Ryan also said he could see these interviews had an impact on the
students.

“What was most moving for us was that the Loyola students were impressed and surprised at the amazing things the sisters have done,” Ryan said. “Even one Loyola student said, ‘I can see myself as a sister,’ so I think it was really inspiring for
the students.”

“It was a great opportunity to review my life as a whole: its challenges and the many blessings of God's extravagant love lived in religious life,” said Dominican Sister Mary Ann Culotta, who was interviewed by the college students.

In her interview, Sister Culotta expressed gratitude for the opportunity she had to speak with the students.

“You have gifted me, did you realize that?" she said. "You have gifted me by allow-
ing me to verbalize what has gone on in my life. How many people get to sit down and do that – to share what's going on in their lives? So thank you.”

Jones shared the sentiment and hopes that with the podcast now out, it will inspire people to not shy away from having conversations.

“I hope that my experience of trying something new, listening
to other people's worldviews and getting an idea of what these women have done in their very storied lives, will be an inspiration to other young people and encourage young people to go out of their comfort zone and talk to people, especially people who are older than them,” she said. “I think that oftentimes we distance ourselves from older generations or don't feel like they have anything to teach us, but the opposite is true.”

Four episodes of the podcast have been released so far, with the rest planned to be released over the next few weeks. To listen to the podcast, go to bit.ly/3ycQvrw.

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