SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
One of the founding mothers of the women's ordination movement in the Catholic Church has died. Sister Theresa Kane was 87 years old. NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose reports that she spoke out publicly for women priests at a time when doing so was just about unheard of.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: The year was 1979. John Paul II was making his first papal visit to the U.S. Before an audience of thousands at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C, Sister Theresa Kane said this to the Pope.
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THERESA KANE: The Church, in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons, must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of our church.
DEROSE: All areas, including the priesthood - Kane's speech was a salient moment. News spread throughout the church quickly.
HELEN MARIE BURNS: The moment was a bit discombobulated.
DEROSE: Sister Helen Marie Burns had worked with in for years at that point in leadership of their religious order, the Sisters of Mercy.
BURNS: I was with our sisters in Argentina, and the news was coming over the radio in Spanish. I had no beginning, even, knowledge of Spanish, but I knew the sisters I were with were very, very excited, and some were dismayed, and some were upset.
DEROSE: Upset not just because it was considered bold for a nun to speak her mind to the Pope.
BURNS: There was not universal support for her position and yet great respect, as we have with one another, to speak your own position and to be heard, if not agreed with.
DEROSE: Burns remembers her colleague and friend as an inspiration.
BURNS: With Theresa, you were always learning because she had a zest for life and was always exploring the boundaries that were yet there to be and, in some cases, if there were barriers to be broken.
DEROSE: Barriers still unbroken - decades later, in 2015, as Pope Francis made his first visit to the U.S, Sister Theresa Kane addressed a meeting of Catholics working for women's ordination.
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KANE: Anything less than all women in the Catholic community having the possibility of being in all ministries of our church is not only a deficit, not only wrong - it is a scandal to our church and our world.
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KATE MCELWEE: She named it and spoke truth to power. For that, she was incredibly courageous.
DEROSE: Kate McElwee is the executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, a group founded in 1975 that works for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church. She remembers Kane's presence at that 2015 meeting fondly.
MCELWEE: The last time I saw Theresa Kane, we were on the dance floor together at that conference, and so I hold that memory really close. And I just hope that she's dancing and knows that we're continuing her work.
DEROSE: Work toward women's leadership throughout the Catholic Church.
MCELWEE: Everything we do at the Women's Ordination Conference, we do in her footsteps. She illuminated the path for all of us to walk boldly and courageously and faithfully.
DEROSE: In that 2015 speech, Sister Theresa Kane exclaimed, we did it, meaning not that they'd achieved their goal of women's ordination, but rather that they'd created a lasting movement, saying...
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KANE: Endurance is a quality of prophets and prophecy.
DEROSE: A legacy she spent her life equipping others to carry on - Jason DeRose, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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