WRAC Building Rendering

Groundbreaking in Spring 2025!

The Women Religious Archives Collaborative (WRAC) Heritage Center in Cleveland, Ohio will be a place of study and celebration. Housing the archives of up to 40 congregations of women religious in a state-of-the art $22 million facility, WRAC will make them accessible for research in person and online. It will also present public exhibits and events, and interactive digital programs, that honor the unique contributions of women religious to their communities and the country.

“You can’t adequately tell the history of the United States without including the contributions of Catholic Sisters.”

– Susan Durkin, OSU, Executive Director, WRAC

Serving Those Who Served Us

Meeting Congregations’ Needs

61%

of congregations lack professional archivists

39%

need to relocate their archives in the next 10 years

47%

of communities don’t have a long-term plan for their archival collections

81%

of women religious are 70+ years old

Sources: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate study, Georgetown University, 2022; National Religious Retirement Office study, 2020

Help Write the Next Chapter

Just as they were there for us, women religious need us now as they work to ensure their legacies. Please donate today and become a Founding Donor of the WRAC Heritage Center. Your gift will help preserve and celebrate the important contributions of women religious.

The state-of-the-art, $22 million center will secure the archival collections of up to 40 congregations, reducing the financial burden on each; make archives available for study by students, academics, and family members; and share the remarkable stories they contain with the public—in person and online. 

Thank you for your support!

Campaign thermometer showing 13 million dollars raised

Remembering Sisters’ Remarkable Legacies

News & Updates

National Archives Project for Women Religious Logo

National Archives Project for Women Religious Launches New Website

NAPWR is a consortium of repositories working to house, preserve, and make accessible the archival collections and histories of women religious congregations in the United States. This collaboration provides a coordinated response to assist congregations in planning for their archives, amplifies the message of the urgent need to protect these collections, and increases access by digitally linking repositories.

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WRAC Celebrates $5.5 Million Gift from the Sisters of St. Benedict, Crookston, MN

We are pleased to announce that the Benedictine Sisters of Crookston, MN, have made a generous five-year gift to WRAC to support construction and endowment of our Heritage Center. Upon announcing this major lead gift, Benedictine Pastoral Administrator Jennifer Mechtild stated, “Given the varying financial circumstances and current projects in many monasteries, we realized everyone was not able make a large gift. We make this gift to lift everyone up with us.” 

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