On April 15, Sister Joanne Poehlman was featured by Milwaukee’s NPR station, WUWM, in a piece about what materials can be recycled in her area. She had written in to the station’s Beats Me column with a question about recycling a particular plastic. Although she was pleased to receive an answer from the education coordinator for Keep Greater Milwaukee Beautiful,...Read more

While the School Sisters of Notre Dame formally committed to becoming a Laudato Si’ congregation in 2021, the sisters have been dedicated to caring for creation for much longer. As we celebrate Laudato Si’ Week, let’s look back at two SSND environmental initiatives that predated Pope Francis’ groundbreaking encyclical. Mobilization Against Desertification (MAD) In 1984, at the age of 67...Read more

Laudato Si’ Week 2026 takes place from May 17 to 24, marking the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’s encyclical on care for our common home. Centered around the theme “From Hope to Action,” the global event encourages Catholics to transition from reflection to concrete steps for protecting the environment. Although the 2015 encyclical gave special focus to care for creation, the School...Read more

The School Sisters of Notre Dame celebrate the Feast Day of our Foundress Blessed Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger on the anniversary of her death, May 9, 1879. As we continue the work that Blessed Theresa began, we pray that we may be faithful in carrying on her spirit.  ...Read more

In a recently published review article synthesizing over 30 years of work, Kyra Clarke highlights how the Nun Study has shaped the understanding of dementia. Key findings include the importance of early-life factors in influencing cognitive health decades later, the frequent presence of multiple brain pathologies contributing to dementia, and the observation that some individuals can maintain normal cognition despite...Read more

The Provincial Council and the Corporate Responsibility Committee of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Central Pacific Province, have signed on to an interfaith investor letter supporting a shareholder proposal at Palantir Technologies—the company whose technology is the backbone of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surveillance that tracks and targets migrants for detention and deportation and revokes people’s immigration...Read more

The 63rd World Day of Prayer for Vocations will be observed Sunday, April 26, 2026. This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, also known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The purpose of this day is to publicly fulfill the Lord’s instruction to, “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest” (Mt 9:38; Lk 10:2). Please pray that...Read more

Sister Ann Scholz, a founding member of the Alliance to End Human Trafficking Board; Sister Barb Pfarr, representative of the board of Sister House, an SSND-sponsored ministry; and Associate Dawn Martz, co-director of the SSND Central Pacific Province Associates, participated in the Alliance’s annual conference, April 14-17 in Boston. The gathering brought together a diverse group of 175 advocates, practitioners,...Read more

SSND remembers a sister who traded the classroom for the capital and turned a singular conviction into a lifelong crusade for human rights. Sister Alice Zachmann, a School Sister of Notre Dame (SSND) and the founder of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, died on April 9, 2026, eleven days after her 100th birthday, in Shakopee, Minnesota. In a life that...Read more

For the past few years, scientists on the Nun Study research team have been investigating a protein in the brain called TMEM106B which sometimes forms tiny thread-like clumps, called fibrils, inside brain cells. These fibrils, found especially in older adults and people with Alzheimer’s disease or memory problems, may interfere with how brain cells stay healthy and communicate with one...Read more