Special Alumni and Alumni Awards
Honorary Degree Recipients
Joan Chittister, OSB, has been one of the church’s key visionary voices and spiritual leaders for more than 30 years. A Benedictine Sister of Erie, PA, Sister Joan is an award-winning author and well-known international lecturer on behalf of peace, human rights, women’s issues, and contemporary religious life and spirituality.
Currently she serves as co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, a partner organization of the United Nations, facilitating a worldwide network of women peace builders. She is Vice-Chair of the Niwano Peace Prize Committee in Tokyo, Japan, and is also a founding member of the inter-religious International Committee for the Peace Council. She is also the founder and executive director of Benetvision, a resource and research center for contemporary spirituality located in Erie.
On the forefront of new ideas, Sr. Joan has led a life dedicated to her faith, while also willing to question issues within the Church. One of the issues she has raised and encouraged dialogue and discussion is the possibility of ordination for women. Chittister has remained an active Catholic and member of her Congregation while challenging the Church that she lives in on this and other issues of the day.
She has said, “I have simply argued for years that if a woman is not half a person, if she is really a full person – if her baptism is really as authentic as anyone else’s baptism, and her call to discipleship is as deep as anyone else’s, then don’t we have to discuss the theological implications of this as a church.”
There have been painful lessons in Sr. Joan’s life including overcoming polio immediately after joining the convent at age 16. She realized from this experience that “you can make a wonderful life out of all the pieces you are given. There is no magic set of pieces for a good life or a happy life. You can choose how you deal with the circumstances of your life.”
Her publications include a weekly web column for the National Catholic Reporter, “From Where I Stand” and more than 30 books. A best-selling author, two of Sr. Joan’s most recent books, Called to Question, a spiritual memoir and In the Heart of the Temple received first place awards from the Catholic Press Association in 2005. Her devotional writings have been described as inspiring and soul stretching, and are known to make a lasting impression on readers sure of their faith as well as those experiencing doubts.
Sr. Joan has received numerous honorary degrees, awards and recognition for her work, including, US Catholic magazine’s “Award for Furthering the Cause of Women in the Church” in 1992.
She has served as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization of the leaders of the Catholic religious women in the United States, president of the Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses, and was prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie for 12 years. Sr. Joan held the Brueggeman Chair of Ecumenical Theology at Xavier University and was an invited fellow and research associate at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge University.
Sister Joan received her doctorate in Communications Theory from Penn State University and her M.A. in Communication Arts from the University of Notre Dame.
