| Sister Kathleen Desautels, SP | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Employer: | 8th Day Center for Justice |
Sister Kathleen Desautels, S.P., is a community organizer and social justice activist. A Roman Catholic nun, she is a member of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods.
Desautels has worked for 8th Day Center for Justice in Chicago, Illinois for over 25 years, focusing on issues of human rights, women in the church, institutional power, and peace.[1] Previously she ministered as an elementary school teacher, a prison chaplain and a pastoral associate.[2]
Desautels attended Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College[3] and went on to receive a Masters in religious studies from La Salle University. She joined the Sisters of Providence in 1960 and became a fully professed sister in 1968.
For her work as a prominent activist, Desautels has been profiled by Rolling Stone[4] and the Chicago Tribune,[5] among others. She was also featured in the 2012 documentary Band of Sisters, directed and produced by Mary Fishman.[6]
Desautels has been arrested numerous times for acts of non-violent civil disobedience. In the early 1990s she was involved with labor movement protests during the A. E. Staley Lockout and was arrested twice.[7] [8] In November 2001 Desautels, dressed in a funeral shroud and carrying a symbolic foam coffin,[9] trespassed onto federal property at Fort Benning outside Columbus, Georgia as part of a protest against the US Army School of the Americas. As a result, Desautels served a six-month prison sentence as a "prisoner of conscience".[10]