Lifetime Achievement Award to Sister Janet Carroll

Maryknoll, NY –   Maryknoll Sister Janet Carroll, a missioner serving the people of China since 1956, will receive the American Missiology Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday, June 21, 2014, at7:30 p.m. at the organization’s annual gathering at the University of Northwestern , St. Paul, MN.

The award, which was first given by the ecumenical organization in 2011, seeks to recognize individuals “who have made an unusually significant contribution both to the field of missiology in general and to the ASM in particular,” said ASM President Dr. Robert Priest, a professor of international studies, as well as mission and anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL.

Beginning as a pastoral worker in PoLi, then Changhua and Houlung, China in the 1950s and early 1960s, regional house superior for her congregation and language school staffer in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Sister Janet, pictured at left with young people she visited in China in 2010, went on to serve  as Executive Secretary of the Institute for Social Action in Hsinchu from 1968-1972; United Nations advisor to the Holy See Mission for ASEAN States and China from 1979-1987; as executive director for the U.S. Catholic China Bureau, South Orange, NJ, from 1989-1992, returning as a senior associate for the Bureau from 2004-2009; and one of the founding board members of ASM, when it began in 1973, subsequently serving on the board between 1980-1985 and 2007-2010, and as board president from  1984-1985.

The New York City native, born and raised in the Bronx, also served on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Catholic Mission Association from 1986-1987; on the Board of Publications for the Journal of Missiology from 1988-1994 and 2004-2007; as part of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia/China Committee from 1997-2005, as Asia Center Fellow for Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, from 1997-2005; on the Board of Trustees of the Overseas Ministry Study Center, New Haven, CT, from  2001-2008; and as missiology network liaison for Maryknoll China programs.

Author of numerous articles on missiology and US/China relations, Sister Janet, who holds a B.S. in social service from NYU and an M.A. in international affairs from Yale University, currently serves on the advisory committee for Orbis Books, Inc., with whom she has worked since 1987, as well as with assorted organizations, including the U.S. Catholic China Bureau, South Orange, NJ.

Other Maryknoll Sisters who have also worked with ASM include Sisters Joan Chatfield and Virginia Fabella, both past Maryknoll Mission Institute Directors; Sister Joan Delaney, long active in international ecumenical ministry (she will be present when Sister Janet receives her award), and the now-deceased Sister Barbara Hendricks, past president of Maryknoll Sisters and author of As One Lamp Lights Another: The Life and Story of Mother Mary Joseph, published posthumously by Maryknoll Sisters in October 2012.

Founded in 1912, Maryknoll Sisters is the first US-based congregation of women religious dedicated to world mission. Working primarily among the poor and marginalized in 26 countries around the world, they now number nearly 450 members.