Talk about an active retirement

After 21 years as president of Maryland’s College of Notre Dame, School Sister of Notre Dame Kathleen Feeley, 78, “felt the call to go to Africa, because of all Africa has suffered and all the needs it has, especially in education,” she tells the Baltimore Sun. Following Fulbright fellowship trips to China and India, she heard—at a birthday party of all places—of the new Catholic University of Ghana. She contacted the president, and “he almost jumped out of the computer,” Feeley says. His message: “Come immediately.”

The university area, with its power outages, bad roads, and unairconditioned convent, is a far cry from Baltimore, where, Feeley told The Catholic Review, “I had an overdose of comfort and security.”

Most of the university’s 500 students are committed Christians and bring a faith perspective to their studies. “I love the sense they have of living in a spiritual world,” says Feeley. “It’s a quality I hope they keep.” In her teaching of English and religion, Feeley says her “goal is for them to read. Their lives will be much richer.” She also tries to expose her students to new ways of interpreting the Bible, with which they are very familiar. “There is a tendency toward literalism,” Feeley says. Besides teaching, Feeley also works with School Sisters of Notre Dame novices from all of Africa.

Her work in Ghana, she reports, has enlarged her view of Catholicism, led her to rely more on the Holy Spirit, and increased her appreciation of her community’s idea of transformation. “Being transformed is more than being your best self,” she says. “It’s being the self you never knew you could be.”