In the 2025 Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality, Kathleen Sprows Cummings marked the lecture’s 40th anniversary by speaking about the complex and overlapping ways U.S. Catholic sisters “made history” throughout its founding era. As actors and archivists, as scholars and subjects, and as seekers and tellers of the truth, these “holy women” dared to tell new stories about themselves, their communities, and their church. Today, these rewritten narratives not only help us better understand the past, but also inspire us to imagine a new future.

Kathleen Sprows Cummings, PhD, is Rev. John A. O’Brien Collegiate Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.