Dr. Cynthia Bailey Manns stood before a room of Black Catholic women celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Sisters in the Spirit group and asked them to think of a woman who had helped bring them to where they were.
Someone who had nurtured them. Guided them. Loved them. Challenged them.
“Think of one woman you want to invite into this space,” Manns said.
On the count of three, the women called out their names.
The exercise opened a keynote address centered on the women whose faith has shaped the Church, from Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb and Sister Thea Bowman before the U.S. bishops to the women gathered Sept. 12 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Washington.
Manns returned throughout her address to one message.
“What comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped,” she said.
Sisters in the Spirit marked its silver anniversary during its annual Triumph of the Cross Mass and brunch. Josephite Father Cornelius K. Ejiogu, the pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish and spiritual moderator for the group, celebrated the Mass.
At the Mass, Father Ejiogu encouraged the women to follow Christ by carrying their own crosses, and carrying each other along the way. “The cross is a sign of God’s love in the world, therefore I must carry that love into the world,” he said.
Formally established in the Archdiocese of Washington in 2001, Sisters in the Spirit brings together intergenerational Black Catholic women and encourages them to use their gifts in the Church and society. Its mission calls members to serve “for the glory of God” and for the spiritual and social liberation of Black people.
For Manns, the anniversary offered an opportunity not only to look at what those women have built, but also to ask what their faith requires of them now.
Manns, director of adult learning at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis, was one of 54 women appointed by Pope Francis as voting delegates to the 2023 and 2024 Synod on Synodality in Rome. She holds a doctor of ministry degree in spiritual direction and now works with parishes as the Church moves into the implementation stage of the Synod’s final document.
She began her keynote by asking the women to settle into what she called a sacred space and to consider the joy, gratitude and praise they had already experienced during the anniversary celebration.
Then she turned to Mary Magdalene.
Manns focused on a part of the Easter story Catholics do not always hear proclaimed on Easter Sunday: what happens after Peter and the other disciple leave the empty tomb.
Mary stays.
“She stays at the tomb,” Manns said, describing a woman grieving, longing to remain close to Jesus and unable at first to imagine the man before her could be the risen Christ.
Then Jesus calls her by name.
Mary recognizes him, and Jesus sends her to the disciples with a mission: “Go to my brothers and tell them.”
Mary goes and announces, “I have seen the Lord.”
For Manns, Mary Magdalene’s place in the Resurrection story carries particular weight.
Her proclamation “is good news that needed to be shared then, and it needs to be shared now,” Manns said.
She asked whether the presence and perspective women bring to moments of crisis might be precisely what the Church and world need.
“Could it be that in this crisis perspective, what women bring is what the world needs at this time to face many challenges?” she asked.
Manns then introduced another woman who has accompanied her own spiritual life: Sister Thea Bowman, the Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration whose ministry celebrated Black Catholic spirituality and culture.
When Manns learned she would participate in the Synod in Rome, she said she knew she would need practices to keep her grounded in prayer and connected to the Holy Spirit, and Sister Thea Bowman became part of the “spiritual toolbox” she took with her. Sister Thea, who died of cancer in 1990, is one of seven Black Catholics from the United States being considered for sainthood, and she has been recognized with the title of “Servant of God.”
Manns listened again to Sister Thea’s famous 1989 address to the U.S. bishops, in which the Mississippi-born religious sister spoke about bringing her whole Black Catholic identity into the Church.
As Manns prepared for Rome, she said she heard Sister Thea reminding her: “Remember who you are.”
That reminder became important once the work of the Synod began.
Manns told those gathered she entered the Synod aware her voice could be overlooked.
“I shared with them, not only in my small groups, but in the large group, my concern that I would not be seen, heard or respected because I was a woman, and because I was a Black woman,” she said.
She knew, she said, her perspective was often absent from rooms where decisions were made.
“And one of the reasons I knew it needed to be heard,” Manns told the women, “was because y’all were telling me it needed to be heard.”
She also credited Cardinal Wilton Gregory, then the archbishop of Washington, with encouraging her during the Synod.
“Don’t you shy away. Use your voice,” she recalled him telling her. “I’m right here. Tell me what you need.”
During a question-and-answer session following the keynote, one woman asked Manns how Catholics could move beyond listening sessions and conversations toward action.
“I am tired of talking, and people saying they’re going to listen, and (then) nothing,” the woman said. “Not just the listening, not just the hearing, but then the doing.”
“You’ve got to have a plan,” Manns responded.
She described an instance during the Synod when delegates expected information from a Vatican study group examining women’s participation in the Church. When the information did not arrive as promised, she said delegates continued pressing for answers.
“We raised hell,” Manns said, drawing a reaction from the room.
“You cannot, even if you are the Vatican, say that we have to be responsible, accountable and transparent if you are not willing to do that,” she recalled the delegates telling officials.
Manns urged lay Catholics to bring the same persistence to their own dioceses and parishes.
“There’s nothing wrong with getting on your archbishop’s calendar,” she said. “Call and take a group of 10 people and go down and sit.”
Church leaders cannot know what Catholics have not told them, she added.
“We are co-responsible, and we have to participate,” Manns said. “Use your voice.”
Her challenge echoed the history being celebrated around her.
Sisters in the Spirit began 25 years ago with Black Catholic women seeking a place to strengthen their faith, encourage one another and use their gifts in service to the Church. In an anniversary message, the group’s president, Yvette White, honored the women who “laid the foundation” for the ministry and those who carried it forward.
Those relationships, White wrote, have grown from friendship “into family.”
Manns asked the women gathered for the anniversary to see themselves within the same story — recipients of a faith handed on by women before them and participants in what comes next.
She closed where she began, with Mary Magdalene’s proclamation and the conviction she had repeated throughout the morning.
“We have seen the Lord,” Manns said. “Jesus is alive. Rejoice and be glad.”
Then she offered one final reminder.
“If you remember nothing else,” she said, “what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”
