Born: September 24th, 1936
Died: August 22nd, 2024
Sr Theresa Kane, a Roman Catholic nun who called on her fellow sisters to push for ordination, and who led by example when, while introducing Pope John Paul II during his 1979 visit to the United States, she publicly challenged him to let women serve as priests, has died aged 87.
As the president of both the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group representing American nuns, Kane was chosen to give a welcome address for Pope John Paul II at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. It was that pontiff’s first visit to the United States since assuming the papacy a year earlier. He was entering a rapidly changing landscape of American Catholicism. Ever since the Second Vatican Council called for the church to address itself to the modern world in the 1960s, progressive Catholics had been pushing for change inside and outside its ranks, including a robust conversation about the role of women in the church.
Sr Kane knew that change would be difficult; a few days earlier, in Philadelphia, Pope John Paul II had asserted his strong opposition to the ordination of women. On the day of the pope’s Washington visit, hundreds of laypeople gathered outside the basilica, holding placards calling for the ordination of women. Inside, dozens of nuns stood silently among the seated audience. Most were in street clothes, despite the then-pope’s preference that nuns wear habits.
Sr Kane began her address by expressing the commitment of American Catholic women to the pope’s efforts to address global poverty and oppression. Then she turned that sentiment inward. “Your Holiness, I urge you to be mindful of the intense suffering and pain which is part of the life of many women in these United States,” she said, as he sat impassively. In order to join the pope in his mission, she said, women needed to be equal participants within the church hierarchy. “The church in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of our church,” she said.
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Half the audience of about 5,000 nuns erupted in applause; the other half sat quietly, many of them in disapproval. When she finished, Sr Kane walked over to John Paul II and knelt. He placed his hand on her head in blessing.
Sr Kane’s address was televised and made the front page of The New York Times and The Irish Times. “Sister Kane, whose mother comes from Galway, urged that women be included in all ministries of the Church,” Conor O’Clery noted, adding that she was dressed in a “plain grey suit” despite the pope’s request that nuns should wear their habit. Thousands of letters and phone calls poured into the Sisters of Mercy headquarters in Tarrytown, New York, both critical and supportive. “What she said was indicative of a much larger conversation that was going on for more than a decade,” said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame.
Weeks later, the issue continued to cause comment, with a piece in The Irish Times noting that “the controversy is still raging — not so much on the issue itself but for the embarrassment caused the Pope by raising it ... But no one, not even the Pope, can turn the clock back.”
Her stand made her a leading figure among progressive Catholic women, and in subsequent years she took similarly liberal positions on issues including abortion, universal healthcare and same-sex marriage. “It is almost unheard-of for a woman to counter a pope,” said Jamie L Manson, the president of Catholics for Choice. “What she did was so bold for the courage that it took, because he was such a powerful man.”
The daughter of Irish immigrants, Margaret Joan Kane was born in the Bronx. Her mother, Mary (Faherty) Kane, raised her and her six siblings, while her father, Philip, rolled cable for Consolidated Edison and cleaned offices in Manhattan.
She entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1955, taking the name Theresa. She received bachelor’s degrees in economics and finance from Manhattanville College (now Manhattanville University) in 1959, a master’s degree in public administration from New York University in 1986 and a master’s in history from Sarah Lawrence College in 1993. She is survived by her sisters, Barbara DiMaria and Catherine Hartdegen.
Sr Kane was marked as a leader early in her career. In 1964, when she was just 27, she was named chief executive of St Francis Hospital (now Bon Secours Community Hospital) in Port Jervis, New York. She became the head of the Sisters of Mercy’s New York province a few years later, then the head of a nine-province union and finally, in 1977, president of the entire order. She served in that role for seven years.
Sr Kane rarely wore a habit, opting instead for a large silver cross pinned to her lapel. She embraced the feminist movement of the 1970s, and she was among the first prominent church figures to champion LGBTQ+ Catholics.
She became the president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 1978 and held that position until 1981. She later taught history and behavioural science at Mercy College (now Mercy University) in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Sr Kane faced a backlash after her 1979 address, as did the Sisters of Mercy and the nuns group she led, under John Paul II and his even more conservative successor, Pope Benedict. Even under the relatively progressive Pope Francis, women’s ordination remains elusive.
“There’s something really seriously wrong with our church,” she told The National Catholic Reporter in 2019, four decades after her address. “I don’t think men want to see women as priests. It’s a great loss to our church. They will regret it someday.” — New York Times