When Sister Mary Pellegrino CSJ talks, you can’t help but listen. A natural communicator, she has a wealth of experience in writing and presenting on topics related to religious life, reports The Southern Cross.
“My mother gave me an early love of language, as did my teachers,” Mary told The Southern Cross after presenting her seminar ‘Reality, Grief, Hope: Prophetic Witness in a Change of Era’ at the Monastery last month.
“It’s all about story and connecting.”
Sr Mary Pellegrino CSJ during her visit to Adelaide. PHOTO: The Southern Cross.
The Sister of St Joseph of Baden has a Master’s degree in Christian Spirituality and a certificate in Spiritual and Retreat Direction from Creighton University, along with a Master’s degree in Religious Education from Fordham University.
From 2008-2018 she served as Congregational moderator of her community, and from 2015-2018 she also served in the presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the United States. In both of those roles Mary worked to support, encourage and promote the ongoing renewal of religious life in the face of unprecedented challenges and changes in the church, American society and the global community.
Prior to serving in congregational leadership, Mary served in vocation/formation ministries for her congregation as well as parish and campus ministries.
She currently assists religious communities in planning for the future through the lens of mission and charism in her role with the Religious Institutes Service Group of Plante Moran Cresa, PLLC.
When asked what she hoped the religious women and men of the Adelaide and Port Pirie Dioceses got out of her presentation in September, Mary focused on two things.
“One is that I hope that the people were able to see this moment in a context; not only where they are personally in a religious life, but where we are as a world in a broader context and how everything really is connected,” she said.
“When we’re able to see something whole and integrated, it makes more sense for us.”
From a religious life perspective, she hoped attendees were able to see things differently.
“This is a moment in religious life, and it’s a moment where something is radically changing, but the [religious] life itself is going to go on. How do we want to contribute to that, even though we won’t [live to] see it?”
Mary isn’t one to hold back on confronting topics. On the contrary. She encourages people to think deeply. Her thought-provoking seminar tackled challenges facing the church, including dwindling numbers.
“For so long, religious life was equated with size and numbers,” she said.
“If you look at it historically, at least in the United States, and probably the same here in Australia, that increase in religious life that went from the post war to the boom in the mid-1960s was an anomaly throughout history.”
Fast forward to 2024. “The economic implications of having a large cohort that is growing older and with fewer new members is that it creates a practical reality. In many ways, I think that practical reality has become our narrative. It needs attention, but I think it needs attention in context,” Sr Mary said.
“The narrative of diminishment subtly takes over. Every so often I really have to catch myself and say, ‘is that the path I’m going down in my thoughts?’ How do we go back and create a different narrative? A narrative of abundance to say, ‘well, we don’t have what we did in the past, but what is the abundance we do have?’ In many ways, we have this abundance of elderhood, and I don’t think we know how to embrace that. I don’t think our culture embraces elderhood.”
During her seminar, Sr Mary spoke in depth about prophetic ministry and the importance of building neighbourly communities.”
It is something many Indigenous cultures do well.
“They know how to mark and ritualise,” Mary said.
“So, your transitions through life have meaning and purpose. That’s one of the things about Western culture; we know what the purpose of childhood is, we know what the purpose of adulthood and of older adulthood but we don’t know how to name it or value it.”
All the more reason for neighbourly communities.
“The level of depression among elders is really high, at least in the US,” Mary said. “Loneliness and COVID was really hard but religious life is a communal life and we have a way of tending to loneliness differently. We need to lean into that real gift of community and cultivate that wherever we are, not just among ourselves.”
Mary exudes hope for the future.
“Days like this give me hope; when there’s resonance with meaning and where we can find ourselves coming together across all sorts of circumstances and sharing common meaning,” she said.
“I may not see it in my lifetime, but I do believe that there is an evolution underway that is very creative, and what we’re experiencing now is resistance to the new.
“Historically, there’s always been resistance to the new and that gives me hope that we’re at a historical moment, and this is not the end.
“Yes, we are losing things that are dear to us; our ministries, our properties, all of those things. We’re losing our Sisters and our Brothers in death, and we’re being remade by that. For me, that’s really hopeful.”
“I think that losing has allowed us to enter more deeply and honestly into our reality, to look more readily at what God is doing and to see ourselves in union and solidarity with our neighbours near and far who live through similar losses of stability, livelihood and loved ones.”
Mary believes God is doing something new.
“I think we have an option to either cooperate and participate and co-create or we stifle it,” she said.
“As chaotic as this world seems, my hope is that we can embrace the hope that God is doing something new. How do we want to contribute to that and the world we’re living in? How do we honour all the good cultivated by our ancestors and those who have gone before us? How do we become really good ancestors for others?
“We all have a sphere of influence so it’s about how we can be intentional about how we want to use our influence in a just and moral way.”
This is a slightly abridged form of an article by Katie Spain published in The Southern Cross, the publication of the Archdiocese of Adelaide.