Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, NY

Several Sisters traveled to Camden, New Jersey, recently to join the 75^th Anniversary celebration for Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. The Franciscan Sisters of Allegany founded the hospital in 1949.

The celebration included blessing of the ground for the hospital’s $500 million expansion

project.

FSA Congregational Minister Sister Margaret Magee offered remarks during the event held in the hospital’s chapel.

 “It’s truly great to be here today, along with many of our sisters,” she said. “It’s truly a blessing to see how the vision, values and administrates of our legacy continue to thrive, thanks to all of you. We remember the more than 80 of our Allegany Franciscan sisters who served and administered here.”

Sister Margaret and the other Allegany Franciscans then blessed the gathering with a rendition of a song of Saint Francis.

As part of the anniversary, the hospital is having a new altar, ambo and presider’s chair built. It should be completed by July 1, 2025, the anniversary of the day the hospital opened. The altar will be engraved with the names of the Sisters who worked at Our Lady of Lourdes.

You can read a newspaper article about the celebration, and see more pictures here:

St. Elizabeth Mission Society Grant

By: Laura Whitford, President

St. Elizabeth Mission Society is pleased to accept applications for its 2025 grant cycle (due July 1, 2025) for projects in which the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany and their Associates are actively engaged and provide services to those who are experiencing poverty at in the U.S. and other countries. 

All applications are due July 1, 2025, complete with signatures of BOTH: an actively engaged Sister or Associate AND a Leadership Contact. 

For ANY questions, please contact: Laura Whitford, Mission Society President,

at (716) 373-1130 or LWhitford@FSAllegany.org.

The application is available in Word and PDF format. 

The weekend of May 23-25 was very special for the FSA Integral Ecology Team in Brazil as they participated in the Forest Youth Pre-Cop – PAE LAGO GRANDE.

Vila Brasil was occupied by more than 600 young people from indigenous communities and villages in the micro-regions: Lago Grande, Arapiuns and Arapixuna.

The event began in a spirit of joyful and lively welcome in the Coroca Community, where people hugged each other in anticipation of a great and rich meeting. The opening mysticism with music, poetry and prayer reminded us of our vocation as guardians of Good Living. The almost 5 km walk to Vila Brasil reminded us that the challenge is great, the reality is demanding and requires people willing to move on. A lot of sweat, tiredness, but without losing enthusiasm and hope. Singing and dancing “Anunciação” we arrived with a lot of noise in the large hall, lovingly prepared for the event.

The opening table set the tone: We do not have a spare planet. We have to take care of the Common Home. The present is already suffering, and the future is seriously threatened. The people of the Forest have proposals and paths to good living that can save the Planet. The sharing and reflection tents took up the entire day of Saturday. Announcements and denunciations should appear in our chat. It was up to us, the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, to contribute to the reflection on Integral Ecology, Laudato Si and Querida Amazônia. At night, there was a lot of partying, with the Saga do Rio Festival: documentary, dance and singing, valuing artists from the region, celebrating the values ​​and beauty of the forest.

On the beautiful Sunday morning, a large plenary session, in the form of a radio program, explained the challenges and proposals that the youth want to take to the People's Summit in Belém in November. Powerful and courageous voices were heard.

A collective letter, rich in content and prophecy, was approved and signed. A sign of the strong commitment of the youth to Living Well.

With tears in their eyes, goosebumps in their bodies and their hearts beating, a circle of many circles, with children and elderly people at the center, sang the OUR FATHER OF THE MARTYRS, concluding, with a flourish and with God's blessings, the PRE COP-OF THE YOUTH OF THE FOREST.

Many aspects caught our attention, including:

The leading role of the youth who took on the event from start to finish.

The quality of the interventions and debates.

The involvement of universities, unions, associations, and grassroots movements in the organization, infrastructure, and sharing of experiences.

The relevance of the work of the MÃE TERRA Group, which over the years has joined forces with the various initiatives in the region.

The mystique that permeated the entire meeting.

Maria Helena dos Santos

Mariana Barbosa de Souza

Iolanda Maria Borges

Cleusa Alves da Silva

Integral Ecology Team, Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, Brazil

Southern Tier Catholic School students recently had an enriching visit at Canticle Farm, where they planted seeds, sorted potatoes, shoveled compost, pulled vegetables, separated beans, and so much more.

School officials give “a huge thank you to Canticle Farm, especially Max and Stephanie, for teaching our students about sustainability, service, and the importance of caring for our community and the earth.”

In the encyclicals, Laudate Si and Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis encouraged us to recognize the connection between human beings, God and nature, and to understand what our responsibilities are to each other and the environment. He calls for more human fraternity and solidarity. In these documents, the connection with creation and how we live our lives, includes the need to value the equality of every person as a creation of God, our Creator.

I share with you two ways that seem to be most prominent, and I offer a third possibility.

There is the view that the earth is mainly for our use. Several examples are the current wars between Russian and Ukraine, a takeover of other people’s homeland and culture for the sake of power. People are dying, lands are being destroyed, schools and hospitals are being bombed.

Another example is the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest, which supplies 20 percent of the world’s oxygen. This is being done by big business, basically for money. Another viewpoint is the one in which people are appreciative of creation and are tending to the earth. They are becoming more attentive to what damage is being done and are responding by advocating on behalf of the earth’s need. People are now recycling, conserving, using renewable energy, and planning gardens, and becoming more aware and critical of what needs to be done for a healthy environment.

The third viewpoint is the Franciscan Way. It is in the outlook of St. Francis to give praise and gratitude to the Creator. Franciscans believe that we are brother and sister to each other and to all of creation. We share the same Creator!

Pope Francis espouses this in his encyclicals as does St. Francis in his Canticle of Creation.

Image from Franciscan Media

The Canticle of Creation

By St. Francis of Assisi

O Most High, all-powerful, good Lord God,

to you belong praise, glory,

honor and all blessing.

Be praised, my Lord, for all your creation

and especially for our Brother Sun,

who brings us the day and the light;

he is strong and shines magnificently.

O Lord, we think of you when we look at him.

Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Moon,

and for the stars

which you have set shining and lovely

in the heavens.

Be praised, my Lord,

for our Brothers Wind and Air

and every kind of weather

by which you, Lord,

uphold life in all your creatures.

Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Water,

who is very useful to us,

and humble and precious and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire,

through whom you give us light in the darkness:

he is bright and lively and strong.

 On a related note, the Mission Integration Team at St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg had planned an outside event to celebrate the Canticle of Creation. However, Sister Rain decided the area had gone without rain long enough and blessed them with water that day.

But Rebeca Prado, Coordinator of Mission, says the rain didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits and, on June 14, they will continue honoring 800 years of the Canticle of Creation as well as the Feast of St. Anthony with some joyful activities at the hospital.

We’ll share more on that celebration in our next newsletter. 

BayCare, one of Florida’s leading not-for-profit health systems, and Northwestern Medicine, Chicago’s premier integrated academic health system, are embarking on a strategic collaboration to expand access to advanced medical treatments, enhance clinical research, and improve training and education for current and future physicians in West Central Florida.



By collaborating with Northwestern Medicine, a nationally recognized academic health system that includes Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, BayCare is securing a final key piece in its efforts to grow as an academic health system serving the region, which includes the Tampa Bay area.

“This isn’t the beginning, it’s the next step in a journey we’ve been focused on for years,” said Stephanie Conners, president and chief executive officer of BayCare. “West Central Florida deserves more access to academic medicine and by entering into a strategic collaboration with Northwestern Medicine, we will accelerate our trajectory as an academic health system.”

The Chevron Annual General Meeting took place on May 28, following a month of protests highlighting the company’s troubling human rights record and its environmental and climate harms.

On behalf of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany and Associates NY, IASJ filed a shareholder proposal urging Chevron to conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment that evaluates the company’s effects on communities and ensures alignment with its stated Human Rights Policy. The impacts of Chevron’s operations on human rights, both in the U.S. and globally, pose serious risks for shareholders. While our proposal received 10.5% support this year, a disappointing figure, we remain committed to holding Chevron accountable and will continue advocating for operations that do not contribute to human rights violations.