The Congregational Leadership Team
The founding vision of the Sisters of Notre Dame incorporated a strong central government exercised by a Superior General (worldwide leader). Sisters were sent all over the world from the motherhouse in Namur, Belgium. As the Congregation grew, smaller governmental units (called units or provinces) were developed in distinct geographical regions. The units retain a high degree of autonomy, as well as having responsibility for the support of their members and for funding their works. The Congregation as a whole contributes to the support of unfunded and underfunded Notre Dame Ministries worldwide.
Broad policy and Congregational direction is formulated every six years in a General Chapter (a meeting of delegates from the units and other sub-groups of SNDs) and implemented centrally in Rome by our Congregational Leadership Team. The Congregational Leadership Team is selected from among the membership at the General Chapter and serves in six-year terms.
 Camilla Burns, SND, Congregational Leader
Sr. Camilla was born in Columbus, Ohio, USA as the tenth of ten children. She met the Sisters of Notre Dame at Saint Joseph Academy, Columbus, where she graduated and then entered at Mount Notre Dame, Cincinnati. Ohio.
After the novitiate, she taught at St. George’s Elementary School in Cincinnati and then attended Trinity College in Washington where she received an AB degree in Physics and Mathematics.
Her next teaching assignment was at Julienne High School, Dayton, Ohio. During the summers she earned an MA degree in Chemistry as a National Science Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
After teaching at Saint Joseph Academy, Sr. Camilla became the principal and then the Superior of a large community of Sisters of Notre Dame.
Sr. Camilla then studied Scripture at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago where she majored in the New Testament and then spent a year in Israel, part of which was spent at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
She completed a Doctorate in Scripture at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California with a concentration on the Wisdom Tradition of the Old Testament.
She taught at the Institute of Pastoral Studies, Loyola University, Chicago and then became the Director.
She was elected to be Congregational Leader of the Sisters of Notre Dame at the Congregation's General Chapter of 2002.
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Nancy Wellmeier, SND
Sr. Nancy Wellmeier was born in 1942 in Dayton, Ohio, USA and attended Julienne High School where she met the Sisters of Notre Dame. She entered the Congregation in 1960, and was privileged to finish her studies (B.A. in Spanish, Theology and Secondary Education) before her first mission.
She taught for two years at St. Helen's school in Dayton and four years at Carroll Catholic High School, also in Dayton, OH where she was head of the modern language department. After final vows in 1968, she was missioned to Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico, and worked in parish ministry there from 1971 to 1973. She then joined the SNDs in Arizona, and then spent a short time serving in Hispanic parishes in youth ministry, pastoral ministry and adult education.
Sr. Nancy obtained an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology at Arizona State University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in the same in 1994. From 1994 until 2002, she was the US Catholic Bishops' Conference national coordinator of pastoral care for the Maya people of Guatemala, refugees in the United States, visiting their communities around the country. At the same time, she was coordinator of the Spanish section of the Phoenix Diocese Kino Institute for Pastoral Theology.
Sr. Nancy was elected to our Congregational Leadership Team in 2002.
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Marie-Angèle Kitewo, SND
 Marie-Angèle KITEWO was born in 1938 in KINANGA village, Congo. She is the eighth of nine children.
Sr. Marie-Angèle met the Sisters of Notre Dame in elementary school in Kisantu and in secondary school in Lemfu.
In 1953 she entered the Sisters of Saint Mary of Kisantu, a Diocesan Order, as pre-affiliate, and taught for a year until she became postulant in their order, in 1955, for one year.
After two years of initial formation in the Novitiate, she made her first vows in August 15th, 1958 and taught for one year in Kisantu.
In 1959 she went to Belgium to study. Returning in 1960, she went back to Kisantu and taught for a year in an elementary school.
In 1961, Sr. Marie-Angèle transferred to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She entered into another two years novitiate and pronounced her first vows within Notre Dame, in August 1963.
From 1963 – 1967, she studied in Kinshasa (called Leopoldville, at that time).
She returned to Kisantu as full time teacher in the secondary school, from 1967 – 1969. Then she began full time studies at the University of Kinshasa (called Lovanium, at that time).
She returned to Kisantu in 1974 teaching full time secondary school and part time University teaching.
In 1975, all religious ( women and men) were expelled as directors and principals of the primary and secondary schools by the National Government, in Congo. They were replaced by lay people.
She became a full time professor at the Catholic Theology School, in Kinshasa for 6 years. At the same time, she became a teacher trainer at the “Institut Pedagogique National” (I.P.N.), for 7 years.
In 1981, she began her studies at Leuven in Belgium, for her Ph.D These studies were interrupted in 1984 when she returned to Congo as Provincial of the SND until 1991.
After a sabbatical year in Chicago, in 1991, she returned to Congo.
In 1993, she resumed her Ph.D. studies in London, England, finishing in 1998 when she returned to Congo. She also returned to teach at the University level as professor at ISP Mbanza-Ngungu until 2002 when she was elected as a member of the Congregational Leadership Team (CLT).
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Maria Delaney, SND
 Sr. Maria Delaney, the oldest of three children, was born in 1945 in Boston Massachusetts, USA, and grew up in Marlboro, MA, a working class Irish manufacturing city. She graduated from Hudson Catholic High School where she met the Sisters of Notre Dame. She entered the Massachusetts Province in 1964 at the new novitiate complex in Ipswich. She made her first vows in 1967 and her final vows in 1972.
She received a BA degree in French from Emmanuel College in 1969 and a MA degree in Educational and Pastoral Ministry, also from Emmanuel, in 1976, taking classes at night and on weekends.
Sr. Maria's entire teaching ministry, which began in 1969, was spent in secondary schools, first as a Religion and French teacher at St. Charles High School in Woburn, MA and then at Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, MA. She became a secondary administrator in 1978 at St. Gregory’s High in Dorchester and then at St. Columbkille’s High in Brighton in 1985. Both Dorchester and Brighton are sections of Boston.
From 1978 until 1981, she was also a member of the Boston Province Leadership Team.
She received a Certificate of Advanced Educational Specialization (CAES) degree from Boston College in 1994 and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Emmanuel in 1997.
In 1992, upon the closing of six high schools serving the poor including her two previous assignments, Sr. Maria worked with a large group of SNDs to found the Notre Dame Education Center in South Boston, an adult literacy center teaching immigrants and adults who had not completed secondary school. She remained there as the Executive Director for ten years until she was called to her present ministry in 2002 as a member of the Congregational Leadership Team.
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Rachel Harrington, SND
 Sr. Rachel was born, the only child, of Irish immigrant parents in Manchester, England, on 24 July 1943. She attended St Clare’s Roman Catholic Primary school from 1948 until 1954 when she went to Notre Dame High School, Manchester. She left school (usage of the term “graduated” in UK is used only when referencing the successful completion of a degree course at a university) in July 1961 and entered the British Province novitiate of the Sisters of Notre Dame on 15 September 1961.
After the novitiate Sr. Rachel studied at the University of Liverpool while living in Notre Dame Mount Pleasant, a large community of 86 Sisters. She graduated with a degree in Classics (Latin, Greek and Ancient History), BA, Hons, in July 1967 and then continued at the university to gain a Post-graduate Certificate of Education, PGCE, in July 1969.
Sr. Rachel's first teaching post was in Notre Dame High School, Oakbrook, Sheffield where she taught Latin and Religious Education from September 1969 until July 1974. She next taught the same subjects in Notre Dame High School, Plymouth, from September 1974 until July 1978. (High school in UK is 11-18).
For a year, 1978-1979, Sr. Rachel was a student at the University of Oxford, where, as a member of St Hilda’s College, she gained a post-graduate degree, a Master of Science in Educational Administration, M.Sc.
From September 1979 until July 1989 Sr. Rachel taught at Notre Dame High School, Woolton, Liverpool, which changed its name to St Julie’s High School in the mid-eighties. There, as one of three Senior Teachers and Head of Sixth Form, she was in charge of the 200 most senior girls and also taught Latin, RE and Classical Civilisation throughout the school.
In 1989 Sr. Rachel went to live at home for a year to care for her mother who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Eventually her mother was taken into our house for the sick at Parbold in June 1990, where she died in November 1991.
After serving as a Minutes Secretary at the Chapter in Ipswich, USA, in 1990 Sr. Rachel went back to Oxford where she studied Theology for two years at the Dominican House of Studies, Blackfriars. From there in 1992 she went to Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada, a Pontifical University, where she gained first a JCL, in 1994 and, in 1997, a JCD (a Master’s and a Doctorate in Canon Law). These degrees were awarded also by the University of Ottawa as a MCL and a Ph.D.
Back in England, from July 1997 Sr. Rachel worked as a Judge in the Westminster Metropolitan Tribunal and in the Plymouth Diocesan Tribunal and was elected as the first non-clerical secretary of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
Sr. Rachel went to the Chapter in Amiens in July 2002 as one of the delegates from the British Province and was elected to General Government.
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