Shannen Dee Williams

In these trying times, one can only wonder what Sister Thea, an unapologetic champion of Black life, mothers, families and social equality, might say about the current state of our bitterly divided nation and church.

This March, as we celebrate Women’s History Month, let us pledge to rediscover and remember the lives and labors of the Black women, like Mother Tolton, who in the face of unyielding discrimination fought to make the church in the United States truly Catholic.

In a racially and economically tumultuous year that saw a significant rise in calls for the church to acknowledge and make reparations for its largely unreconciled practices of slavery and segregation, the loss of Sister Reginald, and her expertise in African American Catholic history, was especially wrenching.