Seeing God in a child’s smile: Profile of Sister Marie Elizabeth Jerry, S.S.F.

Sister Marie Elizabeth Jerry, S.S.F. grew up in the Baptist Church and converted to Catholicism as a young adult. She met her community, the Sisters of the Holy Family, while volunteering in their New Orleans convent garden. The sisters encouraged her to attend a retreat that proved decisive: “At that moment I knew God was calling me to come live with the sisters,” Jerry says. In 2022 Jerry made her final profession with the 186-year-old historically black community, the second-oldest order of black Catholic nuns in the United States.