Bay Windows - June 8, 2006
Laura Kiritsy, lkiritsy@baywindows.com

"If you wanted to get a date, that was the day to hang out with Jeanette," laughed Doherty, a gay man. "Everybody, all these guys from all over the place, knew Sister Jeanette. And she was having a grand time. We used to kid about it afterward - the day she went to tea dance."

It goes without saying that elderly nuns don't often make the rounds at afternoon gay dance parties. But for a woman who committed her life to ministering to those most marginalized in society Sr. Jeanette's warm reception at the most popular gay bar in Provincetown is not so surprising.

She was the first person in the family to whom Chris Normandin, her niece, came out after her 12-year marriage to a man ended and she fell in love with a woman. "She was the easiest one in my family to tell," said Normandin, who lives in Northampton with her partner. "She was just so loving and accepting and that's the way she treated everyone. It didn't matter who you were or where you came from, she was going to treat everyone the same and we're all children of God, according to her."

Sister Jeanette died of a stroke at the Marie Esther Health Center in Marlborough on May 30. She was 77. A wake and prayer service was held on June 2; a funeral service was held at the St. Anne Convent Chapel in Marlborough on June 3. Normandin said a memorial service at the Paulist Center in downtown Boston is also being planned; a date has yet to be chosen for the service. Whether ministering to inmates at MCI-Framingham, advocating for alternative sentences for women in trouble with the law, helping HIV- positive homeless women put their lives back together at Ruah, which she founded in 1994, or providing pastoral care to members of the Jesuit Urban Center, a Catholic congregation with a large gay and lesbian population, Sister Jeanette possessed a unique ability to approach others with an utter lack of judgment which allowed her to make deep connections with people whose lives were very different from her own, said those who knew her.

"Jeanette was simply the most spiritual person I've ever met and she also just simply loved the people she worked with," said Denise McWilliams, who befriended Sister Jeanette in the early 1980s, when McWilliams volunteered at MCI Framingham, where Sister Jeanette served as the prison's chaplain. "She didn't love them in that sort of abstract way. You could actually just see her listening to somebody and just connecting with them in a very deep, emotional way that you could call pastoral. Most people talk about that; I've never seen it before or since. She was the one I saw who actually did it," said McWilliams, who later collaborated with Sister Jeanette on the Inside/Outside Program, an alternative sentencing project for women at the Boston Municipal Court. McWilliams, now the director of public policy and legal affairs at AIDS Action Committee, also served with Sister Jeanette on Ruah's board of directors.

Doherty, the executive director of JCC Horticultural Program, an organization that shares the benefits of gardening and growing plants for people with HIV/AIDS, recalls occasions when, while accompanying Sister Jeanette to a meeting or on some other errand, she would spot one of her former prison charges prostituting herself on a Boston street. "There's one of my women," she'd say. Sometimes Sister Jeanette asked Doherty to stop the car and she called out to the woman. "[She] didn't judge them," said Doherty. "She just said, 'Are you taking care of yourself? Are you being careful?'"

Sister Jeanette entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Anne in Lachine, Quebec in 1946 and pronounced her religious vows in 1948. Though she committed her life to the Catholic Church, she was equally dedicated to broadening the boundaries of women's roles in that institution. She caused controversy in October 2000 when she assisted a priest, Father George Winchester, in the baptisms of two baby boys - both the adopted children of same-sex couples - at the Jesuit Urban Center. Normandin anointed one of the boys with chrism oil - in violation of Catholic doctrine that holds that only ordained priests may perform baptisms and other sacraments. Two months prior to that, she had been ordered by Church officials to stop delivering homilies during Sunday services at the center, a task also reserved for ordained priests. Within days of the baptisms, Sister Jeanette was fired from her position on the staff of the Jesuit Urban Center and forced to move from her residence there. Her abrupt ouster after 11 years sparked anger among many in the congregation; when news of her firing spread, flyers calling for her reinstatement were plastered around the Harrison Avenue neighborhood where the center is located.

"I think she really was a model of what an intelligent woman could be as a leader in the church for a lot of people and it was very distressing to see the way church leaders treated her," said Rob Quinan, a former member of the Jesuit Urban Center. "And I can't help but think her gender had a lot to do with it." Quinan cited Sister Jeanette's firing and the Catholic Church's campaign against same-sex marriage as reasons why he ultimately decided to leave the Church.

Despite the harsh rebuke from Church officials because of her participation in the baptisms, Sister Jeanette never wavered in her belief that she and other progressive-minded Catholics could make the Church more inclusive of women. "I think we have the power, the smarts and the love, which is important," she told Bay Windows in an interview just weeks after her firing. "And that's why I think it can happen."

AIDS Action Committee Executive Director Rebecca Haag, who came to know Sister Jeanette when they both served on the organization's board, was impressed by "how much of a feminist she was even though she was in such a male dominated hierarchical organization as the church. She asserted herself as a woman not for the sake of her own development, but because she knew that women had a contribution to make," said Haag. "I admired her courage. And in the end, she sacrificed a lot for the causes that she supported."

Though she gained widespread media attention because of the controversy at the Jesuit Urban Center, Sister Jeanette will perhaps best be remembered for her efforts in the fight against HIV and AIDS. She was a recipient of the AIDS Housing Corporation's Peter Medoff Award and AIDS Action Committee's Dr. Jonathan Mann Distinguished Leadership Award. Her photograph appears alongside numerous other AIDS activists in an exhibit marking 25 years of HIV/AIDS that is now on display at the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center in the South End. The heading over the photo display reads simply "People who have made a difference." Ruah is now run by Cambridge Cares About AIDS; the organization annually bestows the Sister Jeanette Normandin Award to individuals and organizations that work with those living with HIV and AIDS.

But Haag is quick to point out that Sister Jeanette wouldn't want to be portrayed as some sort of saint, one who never got angry or showed emotions, because she did. "She could get in there and fight with the best of them," said Haag. "She was scrappy and tough." Haag believes that in her own way, Sister Jeanette was a rebel. "You wouldn't think that because of what she chose as her profession," she said. "But in some ways she put herself right in the middle of the whole swirl and still made a difference." Doherty, who brought his program to RUAH residents at Sister Jeanette's request, said that she could be difficult to work with at times. "Ruah was her life and she was very protective of it," he said. She wanted things done her way unless she was presented with solid reasons to do otherwise. "This is what she worked for for so long and it was really important to her, so you weren't going to change her mind easily unless you could really substantiate," said Doherty.

Upon leaving the Jesuit Urban Center, Sister Jeanette took up residence in an apartment at St. Cecilia's House in the Fenway, where she stayed for two years. It was the first time she had ever lived alone, said Normandin. She had hip surgery soon after, and her health declined. She began showing signs of dementia, which eventually necessitated her move to the nursing facility in Marlborough. "Her last couple of years were pretty devastating," Normandin acknowledged.

But Normandin's memories of her aunt have less to do with the last couple of years and more to do with "the quiet dynamo who saw something that needed to be done and found a way to do it." The adventurous aunt who, at the age of 69, pedaled alongside her niece on Boston by Bike at Night, a midnight tour of the city's historic sites. The spiritual leader of the family who trekked to Northampton to tend to Normandin and her family while her son was hospitalized after a car accident, rather than attend another family member's wedding. The one who held the family together when Normandin's sister, also named Jeanette Normandin, died of breast cancer at age 39. A woman who lived her faith.

"There's a lot of people who say they're Christian and do pretty hurtful things to others," said Normandin. "And Aunt Jeannette really believed in the message of Jesus Christ and who he was and trying to live that life. She didn't proselytize or preach, said Normandin. "She just led by example. And you just wanted to be with her and be like her. She accepted everyone."

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