A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community

Optimism, passion, and resilience pervade Campbell's candid account, written with journalist Gibson, of her California roots; vocation as a Sister of Social Service, a Catholic community in the Benedictine tradition; and 18 years practicing family law with the working poor in Oakland, after receiving a University of California-Davis law degree. After performing leadership within her religious community, in 2004 Campbell became executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, DC. NETWORK, founded in 1971 by 47 Catholic sisters promoting social justice, focused its advocacy in 2012 on health-care reform (opposing Congressman Paul Ryan's budget cuts) with an influential public letter signed by 59 sisters in leadership. That year, the Vatican revealed an investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States, of which Campbell was a longtime member, asserting its promotion of feminist themes incompatible with Catholic faith. Major media attention and the sisters' two-week bus trip advocating health-care legislation (2,700 miles, nine states) ensued. A similar trip in 2013 focused on immigration reform.