In Kansas, 85-year-old nun leads effort to hold Trump — and others— to account
Although she is a nun — and one who is part of prayerful and contemplative order — 85-year-old Sister Barbara McCracken of Atchison, Kansas, concedes: She’s never been all that quiet.
She protested for civil rights in the 1960s and against the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
For 64 years of her adult life, as a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, she has spoken against violence and for the rights of the poor and vulnerable.
As recently as 2018, her wrists were bound as she and 17 others were arrested and led to jail, held for several hours, for occupying the office of Kris Kobach in protest of the then-secretary of state’s positions on voter identification and immigration.
Some might even recall that she is part of the same order of nuns who, a year ago this month, made national headlines for speaking out against Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s controversial graduation speech at Benedictine College. The sisters openly rejected what they called Butker’s “narrow definition of what it means to be a Catholic” and “the assertion that being a homemaker is the highest calling for a woman.”
Now they, and particularly McCracken, are in the news again — receiving international acclaim for using what little funds they have to buy up stock in companies such as Alphabet and Meta, Lockheed Martin, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan, Netflix, Google, Target, CitiGroup, and many others.
Message of activist nuns go global
And not because they like them, but because they don’t like some of what they’re doing.
So with $2,000 investments in multiple stocks, they have become investors, allowing them to petition the companies and write resolutions to hold them to moral account. Through The Associated Press, which first reported on the order in August, and National Public Radio, ABC News and others, the story of prayerful nuns vexing giant companies has gone worldwide, placing McCracken, as head of the order’s shareholder activism, at the center.
“She’s quite extraordinary,” Sister Judith Sutera, in charge of the order’s communication, said Monday. “At 85, she had thought her useful ministry was about over. Then this happened. As I said, there’s always, always room for a prophetic voice.”
Trump immigration policy ‘lacks mercy’
As for the policies of President Donald Trump: McCracken is against pretty much all of his initiatives.
“I think that’s pretty safe to say,” McCracken said, especially those revolving around immigration and the deportation of individuals to a prison in El Salvador. Some individuals were deported because they bore what the Trump administration misidentified as gang tattoos.
“It lacks mercy,” McCracken said of the Trump immigration policy. “There’s no sense of anybody else’s suffering. You can’t arrest someone because they have a certain tattoo. Give us a break.”
On April 27, in Overland Park, McCracken was invited to speak at a Free State Rally in opposition to broad actions taken by the administration. McCracken was greeted by hardy applause.
“Why am I here? I’m here, partly because I’m an American,” she said, emphasizing that she was speaking for herself, and not her order. “I’m not very loyal. I’m not a flag waver. I am a pacifist.”
She urged people to be “an island of sanity.”
“I like that term because we are actually living, as you know, in a very crazy time,” she told the assembled crowd. She spoke of practicing humility and honesty. She spoke of hope being a response to chaos.
“I don’t know if I’m going to live long enough to see the end of this current chaos happening,” she said of the administration. “This could go on for a while — I hate to say that. But I believe in evolution. And I believe in the goodness of God’s creation. And I believe it will, somehow, perhaps, in a different form, keep going forward. I don’t know if I have a sentence of inspiration here to end on.
“I would suggest you try to recover a sense of awe and sense of wonder — about other people, about nature, about beauty. Beauty saves the world. … Stay hopeful. Stay together. Exclude no one. Be a pilgrim of hope. And be an island of sanity.”
Vatican does not financially support the order
Mostly, it has been the nuns’ investment strategy that has captured broad attention.
“Internationally, it’s been quite the thing,” Sutera said.
“It’s been overwhelming in a way,” McCracken said. “One lady emailed me, and said she had read it (the story) in Chinese. I heard it appeared in Mexico City, and in Madrid.”
The order in Atchison is not large, consisting of about 80 nuns. Many are growing older, and need care. None of the nuns have individual savings accounts. Like other Catholic nuns, they take a vow of poverty renouncing ownership of worldly possessions. Whatever money they receive from donations, Social Security, fundraising — or whatever income may have been earned from teaching — is shared in common.
Financially, the order must support itself. That includes the care of its older sisters. The larger Catholic Church does not support the community.
“One of the things we, of course, have to explain is why we have this money to invest,” Sutera said. “I think it’s important for us to help people understand that we have a lot of people here that have to be cared for. And it’s not like we get a check from the Vatican or anything like that.
“So we’ve been encouraged by religious advisers to have a certain amount of money in the bank to care for ourselves. So there is a whole consortium of Benedictine monasteries. We’re just one of a whole group that assist monasteries in investing.
“We keep investments in places that are controversial, simply so that we can continue to file shareholder resolutions and bring these things to people’s attention.”
McCracken said they’ve written a resolution asking Amazon to allow a union to form and recognize collective bargaining. They’ve asked Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to adopt principles around the use of AI, or artificial intelligence. They’ve asked McDonald’s to phase out antibiotics, and Netflix to adopt a stronger ethics policy for members of its board of directors.
Does McCracken and the other nuns expect companies to change simply because of their concerns? No, but it’s something worth praying for.
“We don’t expect that, you know, Exxon is suddenly going to turn because of what we’ve said,” Sutera said. “But it provides that exposure so other people know what the concerns are and can think about them.”
McCracken entered the order in 1961 after graduating from college. She studied political science and history at Mount St. Scholastica College before it and St. Benedict’s College merged in 1971 to become Benedictine College.
She was 21 at the time.
“I don’t think our time is ever over,” McCracken said. “I think we can always do the loving thing toward somebody else …
“I couldn’t figure out for a long time why my God was keeping me in good health. And I still have some mental, you know, some wits about me, shall we say. It was a big mystery. And then, all of a sudden, I’m in the news big time.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
