Sr Gail C. Trippett, a veteran member of the St. Louis Province of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, has been elected to the congregational leadership team of the 148-year-old religious order.
The congregation announced the news on Aug. 14, the beginning of a six-month transitional period before the installation of the new team, including Srs Trippett, Patty Chang, Eileen McCann, Laura Bufano and Anne Davis.
“Over the next six months, [they] will work with the current leadership team and the congregational staff to prepare for their new roles,” the order wrote on social media.
“Please hold them in prayer during this time of preparation and transition!”
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet
The daughter of an Air Force father, the Catholic-raised Trippett was raised in various military locales before matriculating to Spelman College in Atlanta in the mid-1970s. She graduated in 1978 with a degree in early childhood education and began a teaching career in Georgia before joining the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 1982. She professed final vows eight years later in St. Louis.
Trippett taught in Catholic schools throughout her formation, including at Immacolata School in Richmond Heights, Missouri, and Holy Angels, a Black Catholic school in Indianapolis. After receiving a master’s degree in education from Saint Louis University, she served as principal of Central Catholic/St. Nicholas School in St. Louis beginning in 1989. She also holds a master’s in theology from Xavier University of Louisiana’s Institute for Black Catholic Studies.
From 2000 to 2003, Trippett chaired the education committee of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, of which she is a longtime member, and she served on the provincial council of the Sisters of St. Joseph from 1996 to 2002. She became principal of Resurrection Catholic School in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2009.
Trippett moved back to Indiana in 2015 to serve as pastoral associate at Holy Angels Catholic Church, later becoming the parish life coordinator in the absence of a permanent pastor. She later took a dual role in the same position at Holy Angels and St. Rita Catholic Church, another Black Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
Under her leadership, both parishes were active in racial justice efforts, education, and parish improvement projects. In 2020, Holy Angels began construction of a new church edifice after eight years without a building, an undertaking completed the next year. Trippett also helped secure a $150,000 restoration grant for St. Rita’s in 2022, which is funding a series of major repairs. She retired from her roles at both parishes that July.
Before her election as a congregational leader, Trippett served on her order’s formation team, while also helping to develop a virtual program for women’s faith enrichment, “Fuel the Body, Fuel the Soul.” She also served on the board of the National Religious Vocation Conference.
Trippett is set to become one of the first Black congregational leaders in the history of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, which was a segregated community from their founding until they admitted their first Black member 70 years ago. Sr Barbara Moore, who joined the order in 1955 and retired in 2015, served as a congregational leader from 2002 to 2008.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
