What's Happening

November 26, 2025, Detroit – About 40 Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates and interested community members spent the weekend of October 31-November 1, 2025, immersed in the history of the civil rights movement in the United States. 

The Selma Retreat – organized by the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Diversity Enactment Circle and offered through Weber Retreat and Conference Center – included a screening of the film Selma, dinner, group discussion of the film on Friday, and a visit to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit on Saturday. The program was designed to honor the 60th anniversary of the historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights advocates who sought the guaranteed right to vote for African Americans.

The retreat was an opportunity for Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates to live out the Congregation’s Diversity Enactment, which commits to “acknowledge and repent of our complicity in the divisions prevalent in our Church and our world; act to dismantle unjust systems; and build the beloved community in which everyone is cared for, absent of poverty, hunger, and hate.”

“Everyone who was involved appreciated the opportunity, the discussions, and in that I think there’s a growth – whatever growth that might be,” said Sister Janice Brown, OP, who helped to organize the retreat. “It was different for each person, but I think everyone left holding something new in their heart.” 

“We continue to work toward and understand what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, and that life – humanity and [all of] creation – has a certain dignity,” Sister Janice said. “That’s what Martin Luther King focused on, and he didn’t do it alone.”

Sister Patricia McDonald, OP, helped organize the retreat. “We wanted to help people become aware of the injustices some people have to deal with,” she said. She added that the retreat was a “good reinforcement” of what she had learned as a history teacher and historian. “I’ve always looked at civil rights as an area of study,” she said. “It’s a social justice issue, and the African-American population has been treated so unjustly.” 

The Selma Retreat was not Sister Pat’s first study of the civil rights movement. She participated in an April 2019 civil rights pilgrimage to Alabama with seven other Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates and members of the First Presbyterian Church in Tecumseh, Michigan. “What hit me was to be physically in the space and to walk the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and to know that that was where African Americans were beaten,” she said.

Both experiences reinforced for Sister Pat the awareness of the racial injustice still found in the United States. “Our rules are not fair,” she said. “It instills in me the responsibility we have to be just and … to have a social consciousness. What struck me is the need to change unjust rules, practices, and laws that exist in our democracy.”

Sister Nancyann Turner, OP, was especially impressed by the integration of the civil rights advocates’ faith with their actions. “Hopefully, that foundation and integration is part of all that we are about.” 

Sister Nancyann also admired the courage and persistence of the civil rights activists. “I have not yet had to put my life on the line for my beliefs, but I surely hope I would be willing to,” she said. “I lament with so many people today and I surely want to walk with them in hope.” 

Sister Janet Wright, OP, said she was jolted when walking into the museum. “Some of the fear and anxiety came back for a few minutes,” as she recalled original intense feelings in 1965 during the Selma March. “Some of our Sisters wanted very much to go to Selma but couldn’t,” she said. 

In general, Sister Janet said, the retreat “has given me a renewed and more informed awareness of the courage of all involved in civil rights and voting rights.”

Sister Janice believes the call of civil rights activists 60 years ago is still ringing today. “We are called to stand up for one another,” she said. “We are called to speak truth to power and to do that in a way that is respectful. We’re part of a larger body of Christ, and we’re called to [speak out] for one another.”

 

Caption for above feature photo: Participants in during the second day of the October 31-November 1, 2025, Selma Retreat pose in the foyer of the Charles Wright Museum of African American History.

November 18, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – On behalf of Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates, the General Council issued the following statement in support of the recent pastoral message by the U.S. Catholic Bishops.

At their Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a “Special Pastoral Message” addressing their concerns about the “vilification of immigrants.” This “marked the first time in 12 years the USCCB invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops,” their public affairs office noted.

As women of faith, we have been deeply concerned about the frightening and unlawful treatment of our neighbors – children, women, and men made in the image of God – through our government’s indiscriminate deportation of immigrants and arrest and detention of people of color, including citizens. We are grateful for this pastoral call of our U.S. bishops, and stand with them as they state:

· We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.

· We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants.

· We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.

· We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status.

· We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.

· We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. …

· We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.

We agree with our bishops that “Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.” We join them in urging “all people of good will to continue and expand” efforts undertaken by many Catholics “to accompany and assist immigrants.” We are grateful to the many priests who are using their pulpits to share stories of terrible abuses taking place in their parish neighborhoods and to exhort parishioners to take action in support of their immigrant neighbors.

We invite members of the public to join us for a presentation on What’s Happening with Immigration at our Motherhouse campus on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Weber Retreat and Conference Center, 1257 E. Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan. It will be given by Sister Attracta Kelly, OP, JD, immigration attorney and founder of the Adrian Dominican Office of Immigration Assistance. The event is open to the public, free of charge, and available by livestream at adriandominicans.org/Live-Stream.

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Members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters General Council are Sisters Elise D. García, OP, Prioress; Frances Nadolny, OP, General Councilor; Lorraine Réaume, OP, Vicaress and General Councilor; and Corinne Sanders, OP, General Councilor