Sister Monica Hellwig

Sister Monika Hellwig (December 10, 1929 September 30, 2005) was a German-born United States-based British academic, author, educator and theologian. A former nun, she left her order to pursue her career, which would lead to her being named as President/Executive Director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (1996 - 2005). Born to a Catholic father and a Dutch mother, with Jewish grandparents, she moved several times to avoid the Nazis.First, the family moved to the Netherlands, where Hellwig's father died. Later, to avoid the Nazis invading the Netherlands, the eight-year-old Hellwig and her sisters were sent to Scotland to a boarding school. She was briefly reunited with her mother in 1946, but her mother died soon after the reunion. That same year, at the age of 15, Hellwig began her higher education at the University of Liverpool, from which she received degrees in law (1949) and social science (1951). She briefly relocated from England to the United States thereafter, where she both attended Catholic University for her master's degree in theology (1956) and joined the Washington chapter of the Medical Mission Sisters, a Roman Catholic religious order for women. A few years into her career, she returned to the University for a doctoral degree in theology (1966). In addition to lecturing at many universities, Hellwig taught for more than three decades at Georgetown University. She also wrote many books, including Understanding Catholicism (1981), Jesus, the Compassion of God (1992), and The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World (1976). Hellwig died on September 30, 2005 at Washington Hospital Center from a cerebral hemorrhage