Associated Alumnae & Alumni of the Sacred Heart (AASH) named Mary Margaret “Peggy” McDonnell, RSCJ, honoree of the 2023 Woman of Conscience Award. Sister McDonnell was honored at the 44th AASH National Conference held this year in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, May 18-20.

Sister Shelley Lawrence died peacefully, at the age of 72 years, on Monday, May 29, 2023, at Elisabeth Bruyère Hospital, Ottawa.  Born in 1950 in Halifax, NS, she was the daughter of Vincent Lawrence and Dorothy Hanrahan. She spent her childhood by the sea in Ferguson’s Cove, NS, where she learned her love of fishing. Sister Lawrence entered the Society of the Sacred Heart in Boston, MA, in 1980. She made her first vows in Chateauguay, QC, in 1983, and her final profession in Rome, Italy, in 1991.

“Mother” is a particularly resonant term for the Sacred Heart family. It recalls not only the title used by choir religious before the changes of the 1967 Special Chapter, but the love and devotion so central to Sacred Heart education and spirituality. The symbolic power of “mother” is so substantial that we may even forget that, in the case of women religious, it can also be literal.

This past January, Karla Reyes joined the staff of Society of the Sacred Heart United States – Canada Province and began working for the Province’s Young Adult and Vocation Ministry Office.

On the evening of Thursday, March 23, 2023, a fire broke out and consumed the former Society of the Sacred Heart convent and school at Kenwood in Albany, New York. The Kenwood property had a long and storied history in the Society.