Nun to be honoured by YMCA

Eleanor McCloskey

Sister Eleanor McCloskey has spent a lifetime helping people.

A constant volunteer since retirement, McCloskey has been a professor and school teacher, has earned a handful of degrees and has been a nun since she was 19.

Now 73, McCloskey is receiving the YMCA Peace Medallion for her work in the community.

McCloskey retired earlier than planned. In 1996 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She left her position in the education faculty at St. Thomas University upon discovering she would need major surgery and radiation treatment. Soon, she found a support group for breast cancer survivors in Fredericton, a group she co-facilitates today.

“I wanted to do something with (my life)… I want to help other women who maybe don’t know how to speak up for themselves,” McCloskey says of the support group.

McCloskey says nearly each month a new woman whose battle with cancer is not finished comes to the group and is inspired by the survivors. She likes to provide support for those people, who still have many questions and need someone to talk to.

“We have a lot of fun (at the support group). I don’t go to the group now for myself…I go to receive new people.

McCloskey came to St. Thomas University in 1981 when Monsignor George Martin, the former president of STU asked her to join the education faculty. Upon arriving, she discovered many students had something in common — they had trouble fitting in.

“I heard the students speak about how they felt excluded in the childhood, or in their home, or in their church, or wherever.”

McCloskey began hosting workshops and compiling text about building a more inclusive society and using more inclusive language. She says people often talk in a way that glazes over social issues and lacks compassion.

“It gets me very upset when people use adjectives to describe people. Even when I go to church and I hear them pray for the poor, the lonely. No, it’s people who are poor, people who are lonely.”

After completing her cancer treatment, McCloskey got a master’s degree in pastoral ministry from Assumption University. She wrote her thesis on pastoral ministry for committed same-sex couples, an issue still hotly debated in the Catholic Church.

“I just cannot agree that we can decide, any of us Christians, that there shouldn’t be any same-sex couples …Would God say to somebody, ‘You are made in my image and likeness, but there’s just one itty-bitty thing though: you can’t have any love and affection, that’s only for the straights…’ I don’t think so.”

The Peace Medallion was established in 1987 and has been awarded annually to individuals or groups across Canada who “without special status or resources, put their convictions into action,” and “could serve as models of what all of us were capable of achieving if we chose,” according to the YMCA’s website.

Rick McDaniel is the International and Social Development manager at Fredericton’s YMCA. He said nominations for the Peace Medallion are made anonymously by citizens and then reviewed by a board.

McDaniel had not known McCloskey before her nomination, though he said upon interviewing her, he was impressed with her work.

“The nomination was probably more for her work with breast cancer survivors,” he said. “I was more impressed with… the work that she did in ensuring inclusion for all people within the Catholic community as well as in the larger community.”

For McCloskey, the nature of her work is very simple.

“I just want to be inclusive. I want to allow people to live.”

McCloskey will be presented with the Peace Medallion during a YMCA Peace Week ceremony Nov. 28.

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Posted by Bailey White on Sep 30, 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.