“Far from disappearing with the end of their stranglehold on traditional teaching, nuns renewed themselves…Open to the same cultural influences as other women of the time…they rebuilt for themselves a new space of intervention and fulfillment centered primarily on being present to others.”*
The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (SNJM) have championed the advancement of women, education for justice, and support of social causes (with single mothers, the blind, immigrants, the rehabilitated, the elderly, etc.)
The establishment of numerous projects in Quebec and elsewhere is part of this desire to promote the integral development of the person and the deep desire to help women rediscover their dignity and become agents of change in their environment. The SNJMs have also collaborated with others in several works, notably in Quebec, a project for single mothers, a group of “Rencontres cuisines” (Sr. Lise Gagnon), a home for mentally handicapped persons (Sr. Lise Bernier), the Centre des Jardins in the East End of Montreal (Sr. Jeanne Bois, Sr. Yolande Moreau) and the Maison du Père (Sr. Thérèse Bibeau).
Among several notable actions, it is also worth noting the participation of the SNJMs in the Bread and Roses March in 1995, which five years later became the “World March of Women”. At the time, it was a question of “bringing these women to understand, little by little, how the systems impoverished them. They discovered that they were impoverished and not poor,” recalls Sr. Lise Gagnon, who was very involved in the Centre-Sud district of Montreal. She marched from Montreal to the National Assembly in Quebec City to present several demands. She was supported by a delegation of five other SNJM marchers who took turns to march.
Lise Gagnon and many of her sisters have participated in subsequent editions of the World March of Women. The suffering and the injustice done to women are always a source of motivation for each of them.
*Entre Concile et Vatican II | Les religieuses au Québec, une fidélité créatrice – Dominique Laperle, Médiaspaul, 286 p.






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