SPONSORSHIP AGREEMENT — Marilyn MacDonald, SOS, Community Director of the Sisters of Service (left), and Thérèse Meunier, CSJ, Congregational Leader of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, recently signed a sponsorship agreement. According to the agreement the Sisters of St. Joseph will be responsible for the management and governance of the congregation of the Sisters of Service as long as a Sister of Service lives.

Sisters enter sponsorship relationship

TORONTO — On Jan. 25, 2012, after dialogue and consultation and with the approval of Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, the Sisters of Service (SOS) and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto (CSJ) signed a sponsorship agreement at the CSJ Administration Centre in Toronto.

According to this agreement, the Sisters of St. Joseph will be responsible for the management and governance of the congregation of the Sisters of Service as long as a Sister of Service lives.

This sponsorship agreement represents a complex mutually binding set of responsibilities and expectations freely entered into so that the apostolic and community life of the Sisters of Service can carry on. It will ensure that the care of the Sisters of Service and stewardship of their corporations and other resources are carried out in a manner that is consistent with the charism, mission and values of the Sisters of Service.

At their 2007 General Chapter, the Institute of the Sisters of Service recognized their present reality and saw the need to plan for their future. They decided to stop seeking new members and to make preparations to ensure the care of their sisters as long as a Sisters of Service lives.

This set the direction that led them to explore various options that would allow them to maintain their identity while ensuring the care of their sisters and while entrusting their governance to another organization.

Following consultation, prayer, study and discernment, the Sisters of Service looked at the possibility of a sponsorship agreement. Just as they had courageously established a new congregation in 1922, they now courageously responded to their present reality.

In October 2009, after further consultation and discernment, the Sisters of Service made a formal request to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto to discuss the possibility of sponsoring the Institute.

The two congregations have some shared history. When they were first founded, the Sisters of Service asked the Sisters of St. Joseph to provide sisters to serve as superiors and to assist in the religious formation of the members of the new community.

“The Sisters of St. Joseph provided leadership and formation in the founding stages of the Sisters of Service,” said Marilyn MacDonald, SOS, Community Director of the Sisters of Service, who signed the agreement on behalf of her congregation. “The Sisters of Service are deeply grateful to God, to our sisters and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto who have made this commitment with courage and trust.”

“This agreement reflects many hours of work, of dialogue, of listening to one another and of articulating needs,” said Thérèse Meunier, CSJ, Congregational Leader of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, who signed on behalf of the Sisters of St. Joseph. “It also reflects a relationship of trust, of mutual respect and of collaboration.”

The Sisters of Service have appointed one of their sisters as an animator for a period of two years. She will support the Sisters of Service in remaining independent and managing their community life and ministries.

The Sisters of St. Joseph are a Catholic congregation of women religious dedicated to nurturing community with the neighbour, especially with the homeless, the alienated, the economically poor, women at risk and our wounded earth. This mission has led them to found ministries in social, pastoral, educational, health and spiritual fields in their over-160 years in Canada.

The Sisters of Service are a Catholic congregation of women religious founded by Catherine Donnelly in 1922 in Canada in order to respond to the spiritual and educational needs of recent immigrants living in isolated settlements in the Canadian west. Guided by their motto “I have come to serve” the sisters were teachers, catechists, nurses and social workers among those most in need.