Joan Daugherty Chittister (born April 26, 1936 ), is an American Benedictine nun, theologian, author, and speaker. She has served as Benedictine prioress and Benedictine federation president, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women.

Biography

Early life

Chittister was born on April 26, 1936, to Daniel and Loretta Daugherty. Her father died when she was very young and her mother married Harold Chittister. Joan Chittister described her step-father as a violently abusive alcoholic.

Education

She was educated by Sisters of St. Joseph, and later attended St. Benedict Academy in Erie, Pennsylvania. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at Mercyhurst University, graduating in 1962, a master's degree in communication arts from the University of Notre Dame, graduating in 1968, and a Ph.D. in speech communication theory from Penn State University, graduating in 1971. She is also an elected fellow of St. Edmunds College at the University of Cambridge.

Career

Chittister entered religious life in 1957, at age 16. Within her first week, she contracted polio, which put her in an iron lung for several months; it took four years for her to fully recover. In 1971, Chittister was elected president of the Federation of St. Scholastica, a federation of twenty monasteries of Benedictine women in the United States and Mexico, established in 1922. She was a prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, for 12 years and is a past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She serves as co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women (2016–2019), an inclusive international network of spiritual and community leaders. With this organization, she works to bring a spiritual perspective to conflict resolution fueled by pressing economic and ecological crises across the globe. Chittister says that women's ordination has never been her primary focus. Her books deal with monasticism, justice and equality especially for women in church and society, interfaith topics, peace and others. She has won 16 Catholic Press Association awards for her books and numerous other awards for her work, including 12 honorary degrees from US universities. She writes a column for the National Catholic Reporter, "From Where I Stand". Penn State University holds the Joan D. Chittister Literary Archives. A biography of Chittister was released by Orbis Books in October 2015, Joan Chittister: Her Journey from Certainty to Faith by Tom Roberts.

Controversies

Chittister's stances on contraception and women's ordination are known to contradict the official teachings of the Catholic Church. She was one of two nuns prohibited by Church authorities from attending the first Women's Ordination Worldwide conference on June 30, 2001. However, she not only attended, but gave the opening address. In another instance, Chittister rejected the Church's strictures against the 23 nuns who ran an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the Church's teaching on abortion.

Recent publications

Joan Chittister: Essential Writings, a compilation from her best writing from books, articles and speeches, was published by Orbis Books in August 2014 (ed. Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, Mary Hembrow Snyder, PhD). In 2015, Dear Joan: conversations with women in the church was published by Garratt Publishing.