HOPE 2025: From the Sidelines

by Tammy Townsend Denny, Leadership Collaborative Associate Director

Tammy, second from left, with Linda Buck, CSJ and the tech team from Microvox

I was near tears the last day of HOPE 2025 as I walked into the Don Francesco auditorium at Fraterna Domus retreat center in Sacrofano, outside of Rome. The lump in my throat and tightness in my chest lingered as I watched the nearly 200 Catholic sisters from six continents filter into the room and find their seats at the tables where they had spent the last four days connecting, lamenting, and celebrating the joys and struggles of religious life. From behind the audio-visual tech area where I sat, I saw even more sisters begin to appear on the Zoom screens, many connecting well before sunrise in their time zone to be a part of this gathering. 

It had been almost a year of planning with the Leadership Collaborative team and many other sister volunteers to create this gathering where sisters under 65 years old could come together and share their similarities, bridging divides across charism, culture, and language. As an associate director with the Leadership Collaborative, I got to be on the sidelines witnessing this momentous occasion, gazing over tables and Zoom screens of sisters who were sometimes singing, sometimes dancing, sometimes crying, but always deeply listening to each other and the Spirit that filled the room.

In Genesis 2:7, we read of God blowing the breath of life into the nostrils of the first human, bringing into being a new creation. That breath of life, the ruah, flowed in the conversations as sisters connected with sisters, dismantling arbitrary divisions that happen even in religious life. Something new was being breathed into life. Something new was, and is, emerging. Though, I don’t know if anyone knows exactly what it is.  

Walking the hills of the retreat center in the heat of an Italian summer, battling jet lag while trying to squeeze in a few hours of sleep in un-air-conditioned rooms, and navigating the tensions and complications of organizing an international gathering is enough to make some lose their faith in the goodness of the world. But there was something bigger and more powerful going on at HOPE 2025, a loving energy of hope that rose above the hills and renewed my faith in the beauty of what can emerge when we pause and get to know one another as more than the clothes we wear, the languages we speak, or the titles we carry.

After nearly a decade of working among sisters, I have seen countless times when sisters are pulled in multiple directions by obligations to their ministries, their religious communities, their families of origin. Countless times I have seen well-meaning people place even more demands on sisters’ time, prayers, energy, as if they owned sisters’ very souls. And countless times I have seen sisters respond with kindness and grace through tired eyes and exhausted spirits. At HOPE 2025, I got to witness sisters set aside their public roles in ministry, embrace the challenges of being a woman religious, and renew their hope in religious life. I got to witness ruah, the breath of God, gusting with such a power that I couldn’t help but be swept into the current of hope for what is now and what is to come. 

There is hope in religious life!

Photos from the sidelines of HOPE 2025.