Sisters of Life celebrate life and legacy of Cardinal John O’Connor 25 years after his death
Cardinal John O’Connor attends the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City as grand marshal on March 17, 1995. / Credit: JON LEVY/AFP via Getty Images
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
In 1975, Cardinal John O’Connor, the late former archbishop of New York, visited the Dachau concentration camp. His life-changing experience there eventually led him to found the Sisters of Life, a community of women dedicated to living out his mission: protecting and enhancing human life.
Today, 25 years after his death, more than a 100 of those sisters will gather with O’Connor’s relatives, friends, and those who have benefited from his ministry to celebrate his legacy.
Sister Maris Stella, vicar general of the Sisters of Life, reflected on that legacy and told CNA that throughout his life O’Connor “had great respect for the dignity of the human person” and always had the dream to work with people in need, specifically children with disabilities and other vulnerable groups.
*Finding a ‘spiritual response’ to a ‘culture of death’*
O’Connor entered the priesthood when he was 25 years old in his home state of Pennsylvania. He began teaching high school students while continuing his own education receiving degrees in ethics and psychology and later a doctorate in political science.
In his early 30s, O’Connor joined the United States Navy as a chaplain and wrote curriculum and leadership formation programs for Navy personnel, forming them in virtue and teaching them to have respect for the human person. His 27 years in the Navy greatly shifted his path.
In the mid-1970s, he made a visit to Dachau in Germany, where thousands were killed during World War II. Sister Maris Stella told CNA that while he was there, he had a profound experience that changed his life.
“He went to the crematorium and placed his hands in the oven … and was pierced to the heart and cried out: ‘My God, how could human beings do this to other human beings?’”
“You could say that in placing his hand in the oven, he kind of placed his hand on the deepest wound in our culture, which he saw was this contempt for human life, this disregard for the dignity of the human person,” Sister Maris Stella said.
In that moment, O’Connor vowed to do everything in his power to protect human life.
In 1984 he was appointed the archbishop of New York, and just a year later he was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II. O’Connor became very active in the pro-life movement by preaching and advocating alongside other leaders.
But despite his work, Sister Maris Stella said, “he wondered why there wasn’t greater progress being made on behalf of human life.” He began to pray and reflect on the Scriptures and the Gospel of Mark.
“There’s a story where Jesus sends out the apostles and they can do all these things in his name. But,” Sister Maris Stella said, “there was one demon they couldn’t cast out, and Our Lord says to them, ‘Some demons are only cast out by prayer and fasting.’”
“When Cardinal read that, those words … jumped off the page to him, and he understood that this contempt for human life was a demon in our culture.”
“It was a spiritual reality that demanded a spiritual response,” Sister Maris Stella said. It inspired O’Connor to found the Sisters of Life to be the “response to the culture of death [and] to pray and fast on behalf of human life.”
In order to find women to join, O’Connor wrote an article for his weekly column in the Catholic New York newspaper highlighting his vision with the headline: “Help Wanted: Sisters of Life.”
Soon after, eight women reached out to be a part of it.
*The Sisters of Life*
Today, three decades since the Sisters of Life began in New York, there are almost 140 women in the community serving across the globe.
The sisters “believe that every person is sacred, unique, and unrepeatable, and infinitely loved by God. Not for anything they can do, produce, or achieve, but simply because they exist and are created in God’s image,” Sister Maris Stella said.
The sisters work to ensure human dignity is protected and enhanced by serving pregnant women in crisis, hosting retreats, and spreading the message of the dignity of life.
At one of their seven convents in the New York area, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Convent in Midtown Manhattan, the sisters also run the Holy Respite, inviting pregnant women to live with them throughout their pregnancies. It has been open for nearly 27 years and hundreds of women and children have stayed there as their guests.
The sisters also hold their Entering Canaan retreats to serve women who are suffering after the experience of abortion so the women “can receive God’s healing and mercy and come back to the life of the Church.”
Each year, the sisters host a number of weekendlong women’s retreats and a men’s retreat to take time for silent prayer, Eucharistic adoration, Mass, confession, and hearing conferences by the sisters. Occasionally, they will hold similar retreats for people with disabilities, continuing O’Connor’s love for and outreach to them.
Sister Maris Stella told CNA that for O’Connor, “the vulnerability of people with disabilities and the vulnerability of the unborn, to him, showed more than anyone the sacredness of human life.”
“The unborn and those who are weak and suffering in a way carry within them the glory of God in a more magnificent way, because their dignity doesn’t arise from what they can do, because in many cases their capacities are limited, but their dignity arises from the fact that they are held into existence by God’s love.”
*Celebrating ‘a legacy of life and love’*
In celebration of O’Connor’s legacy 25 years after his death, on May 3 the Sisters of Life is hosting a block party on John Cardinal O’Connor Way, a street in New York named after the pro-life champion. O’Connor’s family members, families the sisters have helped over the years, and supporters of the organization will gather with the sisters for food, music, and games.
Following the festivities, the attendees will go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a vigil memorial Mass to honor O’Connor and his “legacy of love and life” and his “entrance into eternal life.”
