Social justice advocate Sister Pat left legacy of defiant compassion: ‘She lived for others'
That's how the Rev. Larry Dowling described her Thursday morning to hundreds of people who gathered at a church in Mercy Circle Senior Living Center in Mount Greenwood to honor her life and commitment to social justice and immigration advocacy.
The 96-year-old nun — known as Sister Pat — was diminutive but bold. She was rarely seen without her closest collaborator, Sister JoAnn Persch, with whom she was inseparable in action and purpose. They worked in sync until the day Sister Pat died, July 21, in her home in south suburban Alsip, surrounded by loved ones.
Together, the activist nuns were arrested four times at different demonstrations over the years. They pushed to pass state legislation allowing religious workers to visit people in detention processing centers in Illinois. Their impact was recognized at the highest levels, from being entered into the Congressional Record for Women's History Month in 2018 to receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award — a prestigious honor recognizing dedication to community leadership and issues like immigration —from Chicago's Cardinal Blase Cupich in 2023.
'We've done the stuff that other people didn't feel OK with, and that's fine, because not everybody's called to the same thing,' Sister Pat told the Tribune in January.
Thursday's tributes to Sister Pat also served as a call to action. Yogi Wess, who did social work in Chicago with her at Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly for nearly 50 years, said that if Sister Pat had been in the building that day, she would have likely told people in the audience to stand up for 'the forgotten, the unnoticed, the undocumented and unseen.'
'She was a modern-day saint. She lived for others,' said Wess, 68, who noted that Sister Pat went to great lengths to help her plan her wedding, for which she remains grateful to this day.
Sister Pat was born in Chicago, one of five children, to Frank J. and Thelma Murphy. She graduated from high school in 1947 and joined the Sisters of Mercy. She admitted that she'd always wanted to be a nurse, but became a teacher instead. She met Sister JoAnn at an elementary school in Wisconsin.
Then, in 1960, the Sisters of Mercy community put out a call for a volunteer to go on a mission in Sicuani, Peru.
'I filled out the form, ran across campus, and put it into the mail slot,' she recounted to the Tribune in January.
She lived there for eight years, in what she called a 'house for the houseless' with no running water. In remembering her life there, she focused on the beautiful aspects — the lady who owned the house, named Isabel, who would cook soups and traditional Peruvian dishes, and how the smell would drift through the rafters. Pat picked up Spanish and the local dialect of the region.
Photos of her from that time were pinned onto a poster board at Mercy Circle. She is smiling and wearing a habit. James Connelly, 67, said his great-aunt went and visited her while she was in South America and brought him back a llama fur vest.
'Now, I can't really fit in it,' he joked.
Connelly admitted that he was a little afraid of the traditional nun garb as a kid, but said he always admired her compassion and dedication.
'She set an example as a strong, female leader,' he said. 'And she passed that on to all the children she taught.'
Indeed, when she returned from her time abroad, she reunited with Sister JoAnn and the two trailblazers took advantage of a burgeoning movement in American Catholicism, where many nuns moved from traditional roles to activism. Sister Pat did stints at Mercy Hospital, Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly and Austin Career Education Center, helping teen dropouts and adults prepare for the GED.
But in her later life, shaped by her experiences in Peru, Sister Pat prioritized helping immigrants.
She and Sister JoAnn in the 1980s and '90s opened Su Casa Catholic Worker House, a home for survivors of torture from Central America, on the South Side of Chicago.
Several years later, they started praying outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview. And they collaborated with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to successfully pass a bill allowing religious workers to enter immigrant detention centers. They spent long hours with immigrants in detention.
Pat warmed up the guards with homemade cookies and wrapped candy canes. Because she could speak Spanish, she was able to help detainees connect with family members.
'They just loved her,' Sister JoAnn said in January. 'Imagine how much of a help she was to them, speaking Spanish like she did.'
The sisters stopped visiting immigrants in detention during the pandemic. And under the current Donald Trump administration, ICE has been unwilling to let anyone — even elected officials — inside, said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at ICIRR, who attended the funeral.
'Sister Pat always used a particular word to describe the immigration detention system: demonic,' said Tsao.
The sisters meant to retire after the pandemic, they said, but felt called to step in and help the tens of thousands of migrants who were bused to Chicago from the southern border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. They founded a nonprofit called Catherine's Caring Cause to help asylum-seekers settle, opening 17 apartments to house 100 people.
They shifted to provide 'Know Your Rights' information to their tenants when Trump was elected. In a final essay that Sister Pat co-authored with Sister JoAnn, they wrote about one Venezuelan family assisted by their nonprofit, who they said was recently deported to Costa Rica.
'The parents and their five children were seized at a local ICE office when they reported for a routine check-in as required by law,' the essay reads. 'ICE officials accused the husband of having a criminal background, which he denied. He never had a chance to present his case in court.'
On Thursday morning, a migrant family lingered a little longer in the hallway outside the church sanctuary after her casket was brought out. They said they were blessed to be connected to Sister Pat through a nonprofit in El Paso, Texas. Their family of four was staying in one of the apartments the sisters rented.
'Pat was our angel,' said Jose Ramos, 37, whose daughter is disabled and needs extra support. 'She called us all the time to check in.'
His wife, Victoria Naranjo, 34, said Sister Pat often encouraged her to write a book about her migrant journey.
'It's not easy being a migrant,' Naranjo said. 'She thought more people should know that.'
Ramos said he thinks he might have been one of the last to speak to her before she could no longer use her voice.
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