Our Ministries
Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston Ministries
Our ministries have a long history of responding to the ever-changing needs of the Church and the world. We fulfill our mission of unifying love by building relationships and community wherever we live and work. This mission is lived and carried forward by our vowed Sisters, our Associates, our Agrégées, and our lay Partners in Mission.
Our Partners in Mission:
You will meet anyone of us in shelters, food pantries, parishes, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, retreat centers, refugee centers, colleges, literacy centers, homeless shelters, and other places where we find brokenness and the need for unity and reconciliation. We are educators, lawyers, nurses, family therapists, social workers, patient advocates, spiritual directors, parish ministers, hospital chaplains, theologians, psychologists, physical therapists, technology specialists, administrators, artists, authors, musicians, poets and a host of other professions. While our mission is evident wherever one of us is, some of our ministries are more formalized: seven sponsored ministries and four congregation ministries. These ministries are distinguished, principally by the form of governance and the means of financial support.
Our CSJ Congregation Ministries:
Our four Congregation Ministries are more recent responses to the signs of the times and urgent needs in the Boston area. The furtherance of our CSJ mission and charism is also entrusted to our lay Partners through these vibrant ministries, continuing to respond to evolving needs.
Established by the Congregation in the last 50 years, they strive to respond to the unmet needs of immigrants, seeking to be integrated into American society, to provide supportive woman to woman resources for education, advocacy and outreach to women, and to welcome women and men of all faith traditions and cultures who seek a deeper relationship with God, self and all creation. They are governed and supported financially by the Congregation, although each does its own fundraising as well. In addition, advisory boards composed primarily of lay Partners assist with furthering and long-range planning for the sustainability of the ministry. Impelled by the spirit and courage of our founding sisters, we move with humility, fidelity, and courage, living a spirituality with our “feet in the street,” that is attentive to the Spirit nurtured in contemplation on the mystery of God active in our lives.
Our Sponsored Ministries:
Our seven sponsored ministries have been responding to needs in the Boston archdiocese since the founding of Mount Saint Joseph Academy in 1885. When it became obvious in the late 80’s that we would soon not have enough vowed sisters to continue staffing and administering our ministries well into the future, we began the process of separately incorporating each of the ministries while retaining oversight of the mission.
In 2000, we established a governance model that placed each of the ministries, except Regis College, under the umbrella of a single corporation: The Corporation for Sponsored Ministries of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston, Inc. While the governance of each ministry, their financial well-being, and the furtherance of the CSJ mission, is entrusted to our lay Partners on the local Boards, the administration and staff of the ministry, the safeguarding of the mission, the assessment of the quality of ministry and monitoring the mission integration in the ministry community is the responsibility of the Corporation for Sponsored Ministries.
We are proud of the accomplishments, the positive impact of each of our ministries on the communities they serve, and the ways that the CSJ mission is alive in each ministry community. Regis College was separately incorporated in the ’60s and has its corporation with the same responsibilities as the Corporation for Sponsored Ministries.
