Hearing the Call: Sisters Share Their Stories at NDA Worcester Panel

When you ask four Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur to share their life stories, be prepared for four wildly different accounts.

Standing, from left: NDA Worcester ’75 alum Joann Massarelli, Head of School Linda Anderson and Sister Ginny Scally, SNDdeN
Sitting, from left: Sisters Mary Alice McCabe, Peggy Cummings, Marietta Brown and Ellen Keane, SNDdeN

Sisters, students, alumnae, families and friends gathered in the school auditorium at Notre Dame Academy in Worcester, Mass., to hear their stories at the May 5, 2026, InHER Circle Speaker Series “Rooted in Love. Called to Service: Honoring the Sisters of Notre Dame De Namur, Love-In-Action, and 75 Years of NDA.”

Following an opening prayer by Sister Ginny Scally, SNDdeN, moderator and NDA Worcester ’75 alum Joann Massarelli asked Sisters Peggy Cummings, Mary Alice McCabe, Ellen Keane and Marietta Brown, SNDdeN, about their careers. They shared.

Sister Peggy: Compassion for Others

A 1967 NDA alumna, Sister Peggy began with her desire to serve those on the margins. “God was pulling me and drawing me and guiding me,” she said. “I always had a soft spot for people on the margins and the poor.”

Sister Peggy’s journey unfolded across classrooms, campuses and communities, starting with teaching in Cambridge and Brighton, then moving to a campus ministry in Maine, where she pulled potatoes out of the ground with her students. At Emmanuel College, she led immersion trips to Ecuador that she joked had “ruined them” for life by inspiring them to serve others. In Lowell, she worked closely with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugee families, and her work at Bakhita House created a safe space for young women who had been trafficked.

“You can have compassion,” she said, “but the action has to follow.”

Sister Marietta: The Impact of Small Gestures

Sister Marietta recalled facing a crossroads as she approached the end of her high school years. Inspired by the school’s Sisters as well as Françoise Blin de Bourdon’s ability to give up her comfortable life to join St. Julie, she said she  “got this bright light…that I should do what I had been seeing in high school: to help others. I suddenly saw the life of prayer, and it just hit me, and I had this overwhelming sense of peace and joy.

After teaching at Boston-area Notre Dame schools and doing development work, Sister Marietta served in South Africa during apartheid and later worked in New Mexico with Navajo children, helping communities access clean drinking water.

Reflecting on her experiences, she told the audience that the true impact of service is often unseen. She recalled a woman facing domestic violence who began helping at the school. In time, that small opportunity gave the woman the skills she needed to find steady work and rebuild her life. What may seem like a simple act, Sister Marietta said, can have life-changing consequences.

“She once told me, ‘Sister, you saved my life,’” she said. “You never know—it’s not something you see happening. You just do what you can.”

Sister Mary Alice: The Power of Listening 

Sister Mary Alice remembered the joy felt by her teachers at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Connecticut. “They were fun, and they made friends with us,” she shared. “We marveled at those women who were teaching us, and all of that was saying to me, I think I want to belong to a group that has this tremendous ability to contribute something different in the world.”

She began teaching in parochial schools in Connecticut and Springfield, Mass., but then felt the call to serve sharecroppers in the poorest northern region of Brazil.

She employed the Book of Exodus and the story of how the Israelites freed themselves from the slavery of the Egyptians to inspire the farmers, and many of them were able to obtain land rights.

“Everything I believe and learn today is because of my experience with the Brazilian people,” she said. “Our idea of being a missionary was one thing, and what we found out we would be doing in our service with the people of Brazil was another. It wasn’t what we were going to bring to them; it was what we were going to learn from them.”

After several years, she moved on to the Texas border to work with migrants. Currently, she is in Ipswich, Mass., where she is focused on articulating Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ encyclical to care for the planet.

“The most important thing is to know that we have to listen to people,” she shared. “We have a lot to learn—we don’t have all the answers.”

Sister Ellen: The Gift of Relationships

Sister Ellen spoke of a calling that stretched across continents. After majoring in Spanish at Emmanuel College, she taught at Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, Mass., Bishop Stang in North Dartmouth, Mass., and NDA Hingham. Then she felt the call to start a secondary school for girls in rural Kenya.

“These are people who live close to the earth, who had a greater sense of God than any missionary ever brought to them,” she said. “I always carried with me a proverb that was very dear to the heart of Kenyan people: to stumble is not to fall, but to go forward.”

She studied pastoral counseling at Loyola in Baltimore and joined the Center for Religious Development before joining Sister Mary Beretti, SNDdeN in running the Spirituality Center in Ipswich, Mass., which she called “one of the great gifts of my own journey.”

“Life is all about relationships,” she shared. “I was in the role of a teacher and a learner, engaging with young people, with the people in the village, with others—building relationships and discovering the gifts that people have. And they would discover the gifts I had, and we would draw each other out.”

The Sisters told how their lives had taken them across the world—from classrooms in Boston to Kenya, to townships in South Africa and villages in Brazil, into refugee centers, safe houses and places where hope seemed fragile. But most of all, they wished to encourage the audience to follow their hearts.

“Be attentive to the inner movements,” Sister Ellen advised. “Be attentive to where you’re drawn, to what excites you. Do what you love, and find joy, and that is where you’re going to find your answers.”