During the early days of the worldwide Covid epidemic I became close friends with a woman who had attended my high school who was a year behind me. I had known of her because she was an outstanding debater and speaker who constantly won prizes at competitive tournaments. She also managed to outsell everyone in the school during our yearly fundraising efforts that involved selling World’s Finest Chocolate. Back then I admired her persuasive abilities but never had the opportunity to get to know her better.

Then came Covid and with it a rather chaotic and uncertain episode for our nation. I spent more and more time checking on people that I knew on Facebook and writing blogs. Along the way I found Bren Ortega Murphy and recognized her as the girl I had noticed in the long ago. We began exchanging comments and posts and messages and then one day she asked for my phone number and wondered if she might call me to converse.

I was incredibly excited that she had thought of doing this and so I typed out my phone number immediately and told her that I was ready for her call anytime she wanted to reach out. A few minutes later the phone rang and we talked for well over an hour. I learned that she had gone to Chicago after high school graduation to attend Northwestern University where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.. By the time that I connected with her she was a renowned professor of the Department of Communications and Women’s Studies at Loyola University in Chicago. She had stayed in Chicago for the entirety of her adult life, marrying and living in Evanston where she delightfully decorated her home for every occasion.

Dr. Bren Ortega Murphy influenced me from the start. She sent me cards and magazines and before long had me reading The New York Times and subscribing to The New Yorker and The Atlantic. We would discuss certain articles that had captured her attention and she would guide me to a higher level of thinking than I had enjoyed since I sat with my mother-in-law sipping tea after Sunday dinners.

Bren described a documentary that she had written, produced and directed called A Question of Habit: The Image of Women Religious In U.S. Popular Culture. She wondered if I had ever heard of it or seen it. I had to confess that I was totally ignorant of it. She suggested that I might enjoy viewing it as it traced the often stereotyping of religious women, particularly those who were nuns. In the film Bren contrasted the tropes of nuns versus the important history of their contributions in the United States. It outlined the incredible work of women like Mother Cabrini and Sister Helen Prejean.

Of course I immediately searched for the documentary and was amazed at how easy it was to find. The film was narrated by Susan Sarandon and it focused on the impact of nuns whose work all too often went unnoticed. Among the women that she chose to feature was Mother Cabrini whom I knew of because I had worked for a time as a director of religious education at St.Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Houston. I was stunned to learn of the grit, intelligence and managerial genius of Mother Cabrini as she worked with immigrants in both New York City and Chicago building schools and hospitals that served Italian children in particular.

I found myself being impressed both with the genius of both Bree and that of Mother Cabrini. I realized that even I had tended to view Mother Cabrini as a kind of saintly woman quietly ministering the poor. I had never realized the depth of the work that she had done. My admiration for her soared and I immediately gushed with enthusiasm as I related my feelings to Bree.

I never got to visit Bree in Chicago. We had agreed that I would travel to see her when the pandemic was over. Suddenly a post appeared on her Facebook page announcing that she had died. I was stunned and heartbroken and have never quite adjusted to the fact that she is gone.

What made me happy was later learning that the citizens of Little Italy in Chicago had taken down a statue of Christopher Columbus and had voted to erect a statue of Mother Cabrini instead. I imagined Bren beaming from ear to ear at the news. I knew that somehow the message of her life’s work and her documentary had indeed impacted people in the same ways that they had impacted me. It was as though two very great women had somehow been recognized.

The stories of Dr. Bren Ortega Murphy and and St. Frances Cabrini are parallel. Both women overcame the challenges that women still endure and rose to the heights of their potential. They impacted so many souls along the way and I quite humbly became one of their fans.