Catholic online newsletter highlights Edmundite Missions sisters

A Catholic online newsletter highlighted the four sisters who work at the Edmundite Missions in Selma.

Global Sisters Report, an independent, nonprofit source of news and information about Catholic sisters, featured Sr. Kathleen Navarra and Sr. Pat Flass, both Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester; and Sr. Mary Agnes Cashman and Sr. Virginia Patrick, both from the Congregation of Divine Providence in Kentucky.

“Since the early 1940s, sisters have played a pivotal role in the work of the Missions,” Chad McEachern, president and CEO of Edmundite Missions, wrote in an email to Global Sisters Report. “From teaching to nursing to community development, sisters have been visible and active representatives of our Catholicity through their work.”

Flass said in the article that St. Joseph sisters from Rochester were the first sisters to work at the Edmundite Missions, arriving in Selma in 1940. Starting in 2019, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Edmundites ran a program to bring sisters to the rural South. The program ended in 2022, but these four sisters have stayed on, ministering just as sisters have for more than 80 years in the region.

“When we unveiled our Legacy Wall last week, it was amazing to hear the sisters reflect on the photographs and reminisce on the difference they had made in so many lives,” McEachern said in the article. “We are blessed that the sisters continue to change lives today as they have over the decades.”

The Edmundite Missions serve 1,300 meals a day in the nutrition center and deliver another 600 to those who are homebound, and in three rural areas, the group provides bags of food to 1,000 people each month. The mission also provides programming for seniors, youth and workforce development. In addition to the after-school program in Selma, there are three others in the rural areas of Mosses, Vredenburgh and Pine Apple. 

Read the full article here.