Sister Mary Scullion, R.S.M. is a

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

-based American

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religious sister and activist, named by "

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

" as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2009, alongside

Michelle Obama Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She is married t ...

and Oprah Winfrey.

Career

Scullion joined the

Sisters of Mercy The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute of Catholic women founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. As of 2019, the institute had about 6200 sisters worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations. They ...

and began working on behalf of the homeless in 1976. She has been involved in service work and advocacy for homeless and mentally ill persons since 1978. She was a co-founder in 1985 of Woman of Hope, which provides permanent residences and support services for homeless mentally ill women. In 1988, she founded the Outreach Coordination Center, the nation's first program that coordinated city private and public agencies to assist people living on the streets with special needs in finding housing and shelter in a more systematic way. The following year, she and her associate, Joan Dawson McConnon, co-founded

Project H.O.M.E. Project HOME is a nationally recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides housing, opportunities for employment, medical care and education to homeless and low-income persons in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The mission of the Project H ...

, a nationally recognized organization that provides supportive housing, employment, education and health care to enable chronically homeless and low-income persons to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty in

. Under their guiding vision, "None of us are home until all of us are home", Project HOME is committed to ending and preventing chronic street homelessness. Project HOME has grown from an emergency winter shelter to over 600 units of housing, with an additional 200 units in development, and ten businesses that provide employment to formerly homeless persons. It includes the Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs, a state-of-the-art technology center in North Central Philadelphia that offers after-school enrichment opportunities for students, a college access program, and educational and occupational programming for adults. In 2015, Project HOME opened the Stephen Klein Wellness Center, a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that provides integrated health care including primary care, behavioral health, dental, a YMCA, pharmacy and wellness services. Sister Mary is also a powerful voice on political issues affecting homelessness and mentally ill persons. Her advocacy efforts resulted in the right of homeless persons to vote as well as a landmark federal court decision that affects the fair housing rights of persons with disabilities.

Awards/honors/affiliations

Sister Mary has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates for her leadership in the City of Philadelphia. She received the 1992 Philadelphia Award, and Eisenhower Fellowships selected Scullion as a 2002 Eisenhower Fellow. She and Joan Dawson McConnon were national awardees of the Ford Foundation's prestigious "Leadership for a Changing World Award" in 2002 and received the Laetare Medal from the

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in 2011, which is the highest award given to an American Catholic. In 2013, Sister Mary was awarded the James Cardinal Gibbons Award from

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by U. ...

. The Harvard Observer recognized Sister Mary's Lifetime advocacy achievement. She serves on the board of The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation and as a trustee at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. In 2010, she was appointed by Mayor Michael Nutter to serve on the City of Philadelphia's Board of Ethics. She was the commencement speaker at

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's graduation ceremonies on May 20, 2017.

Education

* Graduated 1971 from Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls. (Philadelphia, PA) * Religious Training/Association, Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, Merion, Pennsylvania, 1972 to the present * Saint Joseph's University, Psychology (BA), 1976 *

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptists, Baptist minister Russell Conwell an ...

, School of Social Administration (MSW), 1986

Notes

References

* Fagan, Kevin. "Success in the City of Brotherly Love." ''San Francisco Chronicle'', June 13, 2004. * Lin, Jennifer. "Mary of Mercy." ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', April 18, 2010. * "Reminding us of the forgotten." ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', January 1, 2012. {{DEFAULTSORT:Scullion, Mary 1950s births American humanitarians Women humanitarians 20th-century American Roman Catholic nuns American anti-poverty advocates Homelessness activists Living people Political activists from Pennsylvania Clergy from Philadelphia Sisters of Mercy Laetare Medal recipients Eisenhower Fellows 21st-century American Roman Catholic nuns