The Annual Champagnat Lecture
POUGHKEEPSIE (April 21, 2016) – Sister Maureen Kelleher will deliver the annual Champagnat Lecture, which is presented by the St. Marcellin Endowment for Catholic Activities. Sister Maureen will speak on “The 2015 Synod on the Family: One Nun’s Experience.”
About Sister Maureen Kelleher
After graduating from Marymount College in 1960, Maureen Kelleher entered the Order of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Shortly after, she began teaching in Tarrytown and established a Higher Education Program whose goals was to recruit minority children to attend college and to support them throughout their academic career. In 1972, she became a founding member of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby group whose mission was to work for economic and social transformations for the benefit of the working poor. Her efforts working on behalf of this group led her to law school where she earned her J.D. at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Sister Maureen is the current managing attorney at Legal Aid Service of Collier County in Florida. For more than 25 years, she has defended the rights of undocumented immigrants in southwestern Florida. In 2008, she was named Woman Attorney of the Year by the Collier County Women’s Bar Association in recognition of her work with women and children domestic violence victims.
About the Champagnat Lecture
This annual lecture was created to perpetuate the memory of the canonization of Marcellin Champagnat in 1999. In 1817, Marcellin Champagnat founded the Marist Brothers, a teaching order dedicated to serving the educational and spiritual needs of our youth. His passionate spirit, daring vision, and persistent work have remained embodied in the mission of the Marist Brothers throughout the world. In 1905, the Marist Brothers established a training center in Poughkeepsie, on the banks of the Hudson River on the site of what is now Marist College. Today, the College’s mission still reflects the ideals handed down by St. Marcellin and the Marist Brothers.
