Anita Caspary


Dr. Anita Marie Caspary was the only woman in American history to hold the positions of Mother General of an order of Catholic sisters and the first president of a Christian ecumenical community. Under her leadership over 300 sisters relinquished their canonical status and religious vows and formed the new Immaculate Heart Community of California. This was the largest exodus of Catholic sisters in U.S. history. Acknowledged as a transformative leader in the post Vatican II Catholic Church, she was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine February 23, 1970.

Biography

A "cradle Catholic" who took her vows in 1936 as Sister Humiliata in the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Caspary became increasingly at-odds with the Archbishop of Los Angeles, James Cardinal McIntyre in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. In December 1969, after a standoff, more than 300 sisters at an Immaculate Heart community meeting voted to become a non-canonical community, thereby freeing themselves of Cardinal McIntyre's jurisdiction. Around fifty of these continued to operate with diocesan recognition. Approximately 250 sisters ceased teaching in the archdiocese's Catholic schools. Caspary recalled that establishing a voluntary lay community "relieved us from threats and difficulties with the church under which we lived at that time".
Caspary was president of Immaculate Heart College, which was operated by her order, from 1958–63. After the break with the Church, she taught at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and served on the staff of the Peace and Justice Center of Southern California.

Memoir

Caspary taught high school English while studying toward a master's degree at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. in 1948 from Stanford University. She wrote a 2003 memoir, Witness to Integrity. In 2012, a collection of her poems, FROM THE HEART: Poems by Anita M. Caspary, I.H.M., was published posthumously.

Death

Anita Caspary died in Los Angeles, California on October 5, 2011, aged 95.