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On June 17, 1989, less than a year before she died of bone cancer, Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A., was invited to address the American bishops. Different as she was from this group—a Southern black woman, a nun raised among Protestants, a dying woman vibrantly alive—Sister Thea was fully herself and very much at home.
She began her address by singing the Negro spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, then humbly asked the bishops to help her and other marginalized people find their rightful place in the church:
Can you hear me, church? Will you help me, church? I’m a pilgrim in the journey looking for home, and Jesus told me the church is my home, and Jesus told me that heaven is my home and I have here no lasting city. Cardinals, archbishops, bishops: My brothers, please help me to get home.
Visibly moved, the bishops responded to her invitation by linking arms to sing We Shall Overcome. One bishop later commented, “At a time of much division in the church, Sister Thea possessed the charismatic gifts to heal, to bring joy to the church. She had no time for useless, destructive…
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