Adrian Dominican Sisters elect new general council
ADRIAN — A new general council that reflects the international scope of the Adrian Dominican Sisters congregation has been elected.
Sister Elise García will succeed Sister Patricia Siemen as prioress. Also elected were Sister Lorraine Réaume, vicaress and general councilor, and Sisters Janice Brown, Corinne Sanders and Bibiana “Bless” Colasito as general councilors.
They were elected during the congregation's general chapter, which took place June 27-July 2 in Chicago, a news release said. They will take office on Oct. 8 and serve until 2028.
Garcia is completing a term as a general councilor when she served with Siemen as well as the other members of the outgoing council: Sister Mary Margaret Pachucki, vicaress and general councilor; Sister Frances Nadolny, administrator and general councilor; and Sister Patricia Harvat, general councilor.
Meet the council members
García: In 2019, Garcia was elected president-elect of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). She completes her term as LCWR past-president at the 2022 assembly this August.
“I sense congregational leadership as a call from God expressed through the call of our Sisters — and through the allure and inspiriting fire enkindled in my heart by the direction we are proposing to set for the future,” García said in a news release.
García spent her childhood years from the ages of 4 to 12 in Mexico and Uruguay and from the ages of 15 to 17 in Egypt.
“I bring an abiding love and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ways of being on our Earth home,” she said. “Differentiation is at the heart of evolution.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, García served as vice president for membership and media communications for Common Cause in Washington, D.C.; as a consultant to national and regional nonprofit organizations; and as director of communications and development for St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas.
In 2002, García and Sister Carol Coston founded Santuario Sisterfarm with Latinas from the Texas Borderlands. An eco-spirituality center based in the Texas Hill Country, Santuario Sisterfarm was dedicated to cultivating biodiversity and cultural diversity. One of the organization’s initiatives, Sor Juana Press, was established to publish the works of women religious and women of color on topics related to Earth and spirituality, including the "Dominican Women on the Earth" series, "Ohtli Encuentro: Women of Color Share Pathways to Leadership," and "Drawn by Love: A History of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena of Mosul, Iraq."
García entered the Adrian Dominican congregation in 2005 and in 2011 moved to Adrian to serve as director of communications and technology for the congregation. She oversaw many of the congregation’s technology upgrades. After three years, communications and technology were separated into two departments and García focused on communications.
Brown: For more than 15 years, Brown has served the Detroit metro region as executive director of two of the congregation’s adult literacy programs, Dominican Literacy Center and Siena Literacy Center. She has been involved in adult education at the city and state level.
Brown joined the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 2003 after raising her daughter and working in finance and banking. She sits on six boards that support workforce development and adult literacy, as well as the congregation’s financial advisory committee.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Siena Heights College (University), a master’s in business administration with a focus on finance from Western Michigan University, a master’s degree in pastoral studies from Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit and a Doctorate in Ministry from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
Colasito: The first Filipina Sister to serve on the Adrian Dominican Sisters General Council, Colasito also is the first member of the congregation’s Our Lady of Remedies Mission Chapter, based in Pampanga, the Philippines, to be elected. Once a separate congregation, the Our Lady of Remedies Dominican Sisters merged with the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 2011.
Colasito's six siblings — four brothers and two sisters — still live in the Philippines.
She entered the Franciscan Handmaids of the Lord in Palo, Leyte, the Philippines, in 1984 and, at one point, served on its general council. While on retreat, discerning her call to leave the Franciscan Sisters and her next call from God, she met Sister Maria Socorro García of the Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of Remedies and was invited to visit that community. While still discerning her call, Colasito served at the Dominican School of Apalit and, once accepted as a postulant, served the school as treasurer.
Many of her ministries have involved school administration: serving as the first head of school of the Dominican School of Angeles City, which the Remedies Sisters started with six students; head of school of the Dominican School of Apalit; and treasurer of Holy Rosary College Foundation in Tala.
Currently, Colasito ministers as head of the Commission on Family and Life for the Diocese of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, Philippines. She is involved both in counseling and in training parishioners to counsel others at the parish level. While serving in this ministry, she is also finishing her dissertation on intimate partner violence for her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.
Réaume: Born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Réaume grew up in Toronto, the oldest of three girls. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and psychology from the University of Waterloo in 1986; a bachelor’s degree in education from Lakehead University in 1987; and a Master of Divinity degree and a master’s degree in theology, with a concentration in Scripture, both from Catholic Theological Union in 2006.
Even before entering the Adrian Dominican congregation in 1997, Réaume was involved in ministry and mission. She taught third grade for two years in Toronto and then spent seven years with Scarboro Missions in Bolivia from 1991-97.
After professing her first vows as an Adrian Dominican Sister in 2000, Réaume served as campus minister at Siena Heights University until 2003 and began her studies at Catholic Theological Union. During the following years she was involved in Hispanic ministry and in formation work: as pastoral associate for Hispanic ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Anchorage, Alaska; pastoral associate at Ste. Anne de Detroit, a largely Hispanic parish, in Detroit; as formation director for the Adrian Dominican Sisters; and as co-director of the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate, where novices from several U.S. Dominican congregations spend a formal year of formation.
Réaume is currently serving on the Dominican Sisters Conference Futuring Leadership Team, working collaboratively with younger Sisters from U.S.-based congregations of Dominican Sisters to prepare for their future.
Sanders: Born in Miami at the time of the migration of the Cuban people, Sanders' traveled as a child to the Dominican Republic and the Philippines. Her ministries have varied since she professed first vows in 1981: teacher and administrator at Kino Learning Center Inc., in Tucson, Arizona, youth minister at St. John the Baptist Parish in San Leandro, California, director of mission and ministry at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida, director of formation for the Adrian Dominican congregation, and head of school of Rosarian Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida, for six years until her election to the general council in 2010.
Since 2016, Sanders has served as director of the congregation’s Office of Sustainability, coordinating projects such as the installation of a solar array and the Permaculture Garden on the motherhouse campus. Trained as a paralegal, she also worked with Sister Attracta Kelly, an attorney and director of the congregation’s Office of Immigration Assistance.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Adrian Dominican Sisters elect new general council
