Network/Nuns On The Bus

NETWORK /NUNS ON THE BUS. Founded by Catholic sisters in 1972 in the aftermath of Vatican II, Network advanced women’s leadership in a campaign for social justice. Headquartered in Washington, DC, Network invited progressive legislators to forums on topics ranging from poverty and inequality, environmental reform, non-violence, voting rights, marriage equality, race relations and immigrant rights to healthcare. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded founder and director Carol Costin the Presidential Citizens Medal, the first Catholic nun to receive this honor.

In 2010, Network Lobby pressed forward. Its new executive director, attorney Sister Simone Campbell of the Sisters of Social Service order, wrote the “nuns’ letter” to support President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Signed by more than fifty representatives of religious orders and organizations, the petition found its way to the President, who invited Sister Simone to a ceremony marking the passage of the historic legislation. Two years later, the congregation assembled in Rome to guard against heresy, under Pope Benedict XVI, singled out Network Lobby for its “detrimental” focus on social justice. In response, Network founded Nuns on the Bus, a forceful agitational group led by Sister Simone and evoking further criticism from Pope Benedict for its “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Under the leadership of Sister Simone Campbell, Nuns on the Bus conducted six cross-country tours in the United States. Its first tour, conducted during the election year 2012 covered 2,000 miles from Iowa to Washington, DC, and carried twelve nuns and ample equipment for public speaking. The nuns focused on poverty and the disenfranchised and protested specifically the austerity budget sponsored by Representative Paul Ryan (WI, Rep.), a fellow Catholic. The Tea Party came out against the “Bums on the Bus” for their vocal opposition to cuts in food programs, childcare tax credits, and other anti-p0verty programs. So prominent by then, Sister Simone was invited to address to the Democratic National Convention in 2012 and received a standing ovation. In 2013, traveling 6,800 miles from New York to California, the Nuns on the Bus focused on immigrant reform, including conditions at the border with Mexico. In. 2019, the nuns traveled from California to Mar-a-Logo to address President Trump’s tax policy that rewarded the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The coronavirus pandemic forced the nuns to adapt in 2020, and they staged a virtual tour focused on the election.

In March 2021, at age seventy-five, Sister Simone Campbell stepped down from the directorship of Network and announced her plan to take a sabbatical. She would have left earlier, she said, but when Donald Trump was elected president, she “couldn’t do it. It was too important to stay and fight.” Network, however, continued its non-stop lobbying, singling out, for example, gun reform, restorative justice, and reduced funding to the prison system.

Campbell, Sister Simone and David Gibson. A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope (New York: HarperOne, 2012).