April 2002 Call to Action News

Margaret Traxler: Activist and prophet

She was the rock of Gibraltar and a shoulder you could cry on. Sr. Margaret Traxler, who died in February, was as powerful a force for social justice and church reform as the 20th century ever produced. In the 1960s Traxler, a School Sister of Notre Dame, marched for civil rights in Selma, Ala., singing “We shall overcome.” And in the 1990s she marched in St. Peter’s Square during a synod of the bishops, not singing this time but carrying a large banner which said, THEY ARE MEETING ABOUT US — AND WITHOUT US. As Dominican Sr. Donna Quinn, who spoke at a Chicago memorial service in March, noted, “She was a global woman of courage and conviction. She not only traveled in the U.S. and Israel, but she also went to Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, where she saw the needs of women and children.” She went not as a tourist, she went seeking justice. She pulled sisters from many orders together in her organization, the National Coalition of American Nuns.

Traxler was the founder of the Institute for Women Today, a Christian- Jewish-Protestant coalition to reach out to troubled women. She organized skilled workers and lawyers to travel to women’s prisons in Illinois to provide training and advice. And she visited these prisons regularly, bringing the women sewing machines to make clothes for their children. She opened Sister House on Chicago’s west side to aid women coming out of prison. She established Maria Shelter for abused women and children and Casa Notre Dame for older homeless women. And she funded these projects by speaking regularly, and without embarrassment, at churches and synagogues.

Her spunk and powerful sayings were recalled by many at the memorial service: among them, “I feel that if you’re a woman, you must fight for women,” and “You should never fear to approach anyone, above all, men with authority.”