What's Happening

Detroit, July 16, 2025 – The election and early messages and actions of Pope Leo XIV brings a sense of hope to Adrian Dominican Sister Kathleen Nolan, OP, who recently retired as long-time Director of the Congregation’s Office of Peace, Justice and Integrity of Creation. Her reflection, “The Pope, Hope, and Environmental Leadership,” is published in The Detroit Catholic.

In the reflection, Sister Kathleen notes many troubling signs of our times, including “too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest.” 

But she also focuses on Pope Leo’s early advocacy for the environment – a stance that many people might have believed was uniquely of the late Pope Francis. “I’m hopeful that hearing the message from a new pope, and one from the U.S., will help Americans understand that care for God’s creation is fundamental to faith and morality,” Sister Kathleen writes.

Read her entire reflection here.

Caption for above feature photo: Adrian Dominican Sisters, in an informal watch party at the Dominican Life Center lobby in Adrian, await the announcement of the new pope, Leo XIV. —Adrian Dominican Sisters File Photo

July 9, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – The Adrian Dominican Sisters and other congregations of women religious in Michigan and Indiana have launched a billboard campaign to share the Gospel message of love and care for others.

In Lenawee County, five billboards placed by the Adrian Dominican Sisters simply read, “Love is kind. – 1 Corinthians 13:4.” This message aligns with the Adrian Dominican Congregation’s commitment to help build the beloved community in which everyone is cared for, absent of poverty, hunger, and hate. 

The Congregation issued a public statement on April 7, 2025, urging all people to help build a beloved community among the American people in the face of the many dehumanizing executive actions and decisions of the Trump Administration. In the statement, the Adrian Dominican leadership prayed that “the goodwill characteristic of the American people of all faith traditions will call us to kinder, more compassionate, respectful, and generous ways of being good, caring neighbors to one another – and to all the other beautifully diverse peoples of the world’s nations, neighbors in our common Earth home.”

The billboards are located at U.S. 12 and Miller Road, U.S. 12 and Matthews Highway, M-50 and Matthews Highway, U.S. 223 and Sandy Beach Road, and U.S. 223 and Humphrey Highway.

Five other congregations are placing billboards with messages urging care and concern for people and planet, displayed in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and South Bend, Mishawaka, and Plymouth, Indiana. Participating congregations are Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters and Sisters of St. Joseph in Michigan and Sisters of the Holy Cross, Poor Handmaids, and Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods in Indiana.

The leaders of the congregations collaborating on the billboard initiative are members of the regional coalition of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). The association of more than 1,260 leaders of Catholic women’s religious congregations serves to further the mission of the Gospel by serving as a corporate voice for the most vulnerable and by promoting dialogue and collaboration among religious congregations and society. To that end, LCWR released “A Response from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to These Times” in January 2025.