Sister Rosemarie Nassif, SSND, director of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Catholic Sisters Initiative, will be the luncheon speaker at the 19th annual NCNWR conference in Baltimore on Wednesday, Oct. 2. Sister Rosemarie’s role with the Catholic Sisters Initiative is to advance the vitality of congregations of women religious globally, enabling sisters to advance human development more widely and effectively. She will share news about the media grants that were awarded last week and the Hilton Foundation’s hopes and expectations for these projects. Read more about the grants in Sister Rosemarie’s blog post.
The three media-related grants awarded last week have a common objective: heightening awareness of the contributions of sisters while engaging media in distinctive but complementary ways. In addition to a grant to the National Catholic Reporter Publishing Co. “to build a network of journalists to write about Catholic Sisters around the world,” the Hilton Foundation awarded a grant to A Nun’s Life, whose creators, Sisters Julie Vieira and Maxine Kollasch, are presenters at this year’s NCNWR conference. The foundation also awarded a grant to St. Catherine University in Minnesota to design, develop, and launch a National Catholic Sisters Week in conjunction with Women’s History Month.
“It is important that Sister Rosemarie wants to listen to us and find ways for NCNWR to be involved with these endeavors, particularly National Catholic Sisters Week,” said Julie Gilberto-Brady, chair of the NCNWR board of directors. According to Sister Rosemarie’s blog, the purpose of National Catholic Sisters Week is “to ignite a movement around the lives and the contributions of sisters in ways that inspire girls and women to picture themselves among the ranks of these women religious.”
“Sister Rosemarie would like us to share our best wisdom and ideas as communications professionals for women religious. We also have invited her to join us for our evening out on Wednesday so that she has additional opportunities to talk to our NCNWR members and collect feedback and ideas,” said Gilberto-Brady.