Activist St. Louis nun to start new career as head of U.N. group

ST. LOUIS -- After more than three decades of working for social change in St. Louis, Sister Mary Ann McGivern is taking her activism to the global stage.

The 63-year-old nun will be the director of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, a nongovernmental agency of the United Nations. That means leaving behind the city where she has worked for 33 years on behalf of the poor, the environment and world peace -- and was arrested six times for her demonstrating activities.

She's leaving her car behind, but taking her two cats, Sweet William and Tiger Lily.

"I keep telling them they're going to love New York," McGivern said. "They'll get to catch mice that have seen plays on Broadway."

McGivern will be missed in St. Louis, where she helped found several social-service and activist organizations.

She helped open the Catholic Worker's Karen House, an emergency shelter for women and children, and was one of the founders of the Economic Conversion Project, which tried to persuade McDonnell Douglas to convert part of its defense manufacturing to peacetime projects.

"Mary Ann McGivern is a St. Louis institution," friend and fellow activist Kay Drey said. "We're losing something wonderful."

McGivern was never shy about urging her friends to join her in her various causes, either.

"She'd enlist all of us who were able-bodied," said former nun Anna Barbara Sakurai. "She shamed us into it, she was so passionate."

McGivern has lived in one apartment of a four-unit building -- renting the other three units at discount rates to those facing hard times -- since 1981, when she took it over and began refurbishing it and the surrounding property.

Her organic garden and orchard there will be taken over by a community group, New Roots Urban farms.

"I adore her, I admire her," said Felice Banks, who lived in McGivern's building for almost five years. "Don't get me wrong; I'm happy for her. But oh, I'll miss looking out my windows and seeing her working in her garden, sometimes at 6 a.m."