Congratulations to Sister Sally Witt and our Archivist Kathleen Washy on being awarded Third Place, Best Personality Profiles – Religious Leader (Magazine Division) in the Catholic Media Awards for their article, “Sister Theresa Joseph Lung: A Unique Religious Life in China and the United States” (American Catholic Studies 136, no. 4 (2025): 1-32).
Their article documents the life of Sister Theresa Joseph Lung, the only woman from China to enter the congregation during the Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden’s missionary years in China from 1926 to 1948. Although the sisters hoped that many young Chinese women would enter, only Lung Kwong Chih, also known as Teresa, ultimately did so.
Teresa Lung came to the Motherhouse in the United States in 1933 and, as Sister Theresa Joseph, made final profession six years later. As the congregation’s only novice from outside the country, her entire formation was unique. Difficulties stemming from that uniqueness and the way her companion missionaries perceived it led to her request for a dispensation from vows in 1948, shortly before Communist forces took control of China.
More than thirty years later, still living in China, Teresa wrote to the Sisters and expressed her desire to return. In the intervening decades, world events, religious life, the congregation, and Teresa herself had changed considerably. Her return to religious life was unique yet again, as was the way she lived it in her final years.
In his introduction for this issue of American Catholic Studies, Thomas Rzeznik, Ph.D., states that “Witt and Washy reveal the ‘unique faithfulness’ of Lung’s life and vocation.”
Subscribers to American Catholic Studies, won’t want to miss this richly beautiful and well-documented article.