Kathleen Spurlin (prison chaplain)

Kathleen Spurlin, BVM (3 May 1925 – 29 August 2023), known in religion as Sister Bernardone, was an American Catholic sister of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). She taught for many years and later worked as a prison chaplain in Mississippi.^[1]

Early life and teaching

Her congregation's obituary says she was born in Nevis, Minnesota. She entered the BVM congregation on 8 September 1946 from St. Mary Parish in Michigan City, Indiana, professed first vows in 1949 and made final vows in 1954.^[1] She taught elementary school in San Francisco; Kauai, Hawaii; Butte and Missoula, Montana; Phoenix; Clarksdale, Mississippi; and Houston. In Houston she also taught secondary school and served as a university campus minister.^[1]

Prison chaplaincy

The obituary says she was a chaplain at correctional institutions in Clarksdale and Leakesville, Mississippi, and that she volunteered as a hospice chaplain in Hattiesburg.^[1] In August 1997 The Baptist Record, the newspaper of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, described her as senior chaplain at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution (SMCI) near Leakesville. It said she had spent several years as a chaplain on death row at Parchman before moving to SMCI when it opened. All religious work at the prison needed her approval.^[2] The paper said she welcomed Baptist volunteers and noted that her first training in prison ministry had come from Virginia Baptists.^[2]

WLOX television covered the ground-breaking for a chapel at SMCI in November 2001. It quoted her as saying that there is "so much good in the worst of us" and urging people to look for the good in each other.^[3] When the chapel opened in October 2004, WLOX reported that it cost $800,000, was paid for by donations and was built by inmate volunteers. Spurlin told the station that it "makes a tremendous impact" on inmates.^[4]

Death

She died at Mount Carmel Bluffs in Dubuque, Iowa, on 29 August 2023, aged 98, after 76 years in the congregation, and was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery.^[1]