Throughout the United States, thousands of women religious took on nursing duties in hospitals or clinics and went into private homes to offer food, medicine, comfort and even housecleaning to families affected by the Spanish flu.
To its benefit, “Sister,” directed by Joe Cardona and José L. Vázquez, does not focus exclusively on Sister Helen’s work against the death penalty but also discusses her early life and spiritual formation.
When Anne Marie Becraft established her school in the midst of the nation’s and the church’s slaveholding elite, she powerfully declared that the lives of black people, especially women and girls, mattered.