Chicagoland

Mercy Sister Pat Murphy, 96, longtime advocate for immigrants, dies

By Chicago Catholic staff
Jul 25, 2025 4:55:00 PM

Mercy Sister Pat Murphy, 96, longtime advocate for immigrants, dies

Mercy Sister Patricia M. Murphy, 96, died July 21, 2025, in the company of her Mercy Sisters, family members and colleagues who joined her in her ceaseless efforts to promote justice and human dignity, especially for immigrants and refugees. Sister Pat was a Sister of Mercy for 77 years. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Mercy Sister Pat Murphy and Tony Wesolewski support Peter Derezinski, as he talks about his father being deported during an interfaith prayer forum at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Chicago on March 21, 2009. Sister Pat died July 21, 2025 in the company of members of her congregation. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Sisters Jo Ann Persch and Sister Pat Murphy celebrated with hundreds of clergy and their supporters in front of the Broadview Immigrant Detention Center on April 30, 2009. After over two years of weekly prayer vigils outside of the facility, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreed to allow the clergy to pray with immigrant detainees on the deportation buses on Friday mornings during a trial period for the next month. The nuns and 18 other religious leaders and allies had declared that they would engage in civil disobedience by blocking the gates to the facility if prayer was not made available to the immigrant detainees. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Sisters Jo Ann Persch and Sister Pat Murphy celebrated with hundreds of clergy and their supporters in front of the Broadview Immigrant Detention Center on April 30, 2009. After over two years of weekly prayer vigils outside of the facility, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreed to allow the clergy to pray with immigrant detainees on the deportation buses on Friday mornings during a trial period for the next month. The nuns and 18 other religious leaders and allies had declared that they would engage in civil disobedience by blocking the gates to the facility if prayer was not made available to the immigrant detainees. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Mercy Sister Pat Murphy speaks to participants as she prepares to sign a 40-day call for praying, fasting and action for immigrant children and their families. The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Immigration Ministry, along with ecumenical and interreligious guests, hosted “They Are All Our Children,” prayer vigil on Oct. 16, 2019, at the Healing Garden, Holy Family Church, 1080 W. Roosevelt Road. The group announced a 40-day call for praying, fasting and action for immigrant children and their families. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Sister Pat and Sister Jo Ann talk while they prepare to sign the petition. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Sister of Mercy Pat Murphy receives congratulations from attendees at the annual Hispanic Ministry Awards Banquet, “Noche de Gala” at the Hilton Chicago Hotel, 720 S. Michigan, Ave., on July 24, 2009. Sister Murphy along with Sr. Joann Persch received the "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award" in recognition of women religious in Hispanic Ministry. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
From left, Mercy Sisters Pat Murphy and Jo Ann Persch sing with Syrian refugee Marwan Saffa during the service. St. Barnabas Parish, 10134 S. Longwood Dr., hosts the interfaith event “You Are My Neighbor” on March 2, 2017. The event featured speakers from the Catholic, Jewish and Muslim traditions and was an effort to show support for refugees and immigrants following recent executive orders banning refugees entering the U.S. from certain countries like Syria. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)

Mercy Sister Patricia M. Murphy, 96, died July 21 in the company of her Mercy Sisters, family members and colleagues who joined her in her ceaseless efforts to promote justice and human dignity, especially for immigrants and refugees.

Sister Pat was a Sister of Mercy for 77 years.

Sister Pat, with her longtime partner in ministry, Mercy Sister JoAnn Persch, were among the driving forces behind weekly prayers outside the Broadview Detention Center, an effort that led to the creation of an interfaith coalition to minister to the needs of immigrants and refugees.

Born in Skokie, Sister Pat attended St. Patrick High School in Des Plaines before entering the Sisters of Mercy in 1947. She began her religious ministry as a teacher in parochial schools in Illinois and Wisconsin before spending nine years in Peru as a missionary, educator and administrator.

Returning to the United States in 1969, she served as a chaplain at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

In the 1970s, Sister Pat served in community leadership in the then-Chicago Province of the Sisters of Mercy, and in the early 1980s she ministered as administrator with the Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly.

In 1990, Sisters Pat and JoAnn were founding members of the Su Casa Catholic Worker house in Chicago, ministering to and sheltering survivors of war, torture and political persecution in Central America

From 1997 until 2002, Sister Pat served at Casa Notre Dame in Chicago, a shelter for women fleeing domestic violence or recovering from addiction.

For nearly two decades, beginning in 2007, Sisters Pat and JoAnn organized Friday morning prayer vigils outside the entrance of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Broadview, praying the rosary in English and Spanish and, eventually, sometimes being allowed to board the buses of people about to be deported and pray with them.

“Throughout all the violence Pat saw inflicted on the many people she accompanied, she lobbied for, or for whom she protested, I admired both Pat — and her dear friend and accomplice Sister JoAnn Persch — because they resisted evil by taking the Gospel message very, very seriously. ‘Love one another as I have loved you,’” said Sister Susan Sanders, president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. “And do good to others even if they wish you ill. This, I believe, was at the heart of their spiritual resilience, and spiritual resistance. Prayer. Courage. Nonviolence. Persistence. And love.”

Sister Pat and Sister JoAnn worked for the 2008 passage of the Illinois Access to Religious Ministry Act, which mandated in-person access to provide spiritual care for migrants in detention, ensuring migrants the same access as other inmates in the Illinois detention system. This law allowed the sisters and others to visit Sisters Pat and JoAnn to minister in person to detained migrants, praying with them and hearing their stories.

The sisters were instrumental in creating what was then known as the Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants, now the Illinois Community for Displaced Immigrants, which has worked not only to provide spiritual care to those in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, but to offer assistance with immediate needs such as clothing and shelter to those released from detention.

When she was 90, Sister Pat was arrested for the sixth time — along with Sister JoAnn — participating in civil disobedience at the 2019 Catholic Day of Action for Action for Dreamers in Washington, D.C., a nonviolent protest in support of immigrants that took place in the Russell Senate Office Building.

She told Catholic News Service right before the rally that she “couldn’t not be here.”

According to the CNS article, she wore a purple shirt identifying her as a Sister of Mercy and a pin that said “you are my neighbor,” and carried a placard with the face of Felipe Gomez Alonzo, an 8-year-old from Guatemala who died from illness while in U.S. immigration custody after crossing the border with his father.

In 2022, after Texas began sending busloads of migrants to Chicago, Sisters Pat and JoAnn worked with sisters, lay associates and other supporters to found Catherine’s Caring Cause.

The non-profit, named in honor of Sisters of Mercy founder Catherine McAuley, started by helping one family seeking asylum — a mother from Sierra Leone with five children — to resettle in the Chicago area. Now it has helped more than two dozen families with everything from rental assistance and help finding jobs to school registration and medical care.

For their tireless work on behalf of migrants and refugees, Sisters Pat and JoAnn were honored by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who had their names entered into the Congressional Record in 2018 for Women’s History Month.

In 2023, Sister Pat and Sister JoAnn were the recipients of the Cardinal Blase Cupich Lifetime Achievement Award.

In addition to her Mercy sisters, Sister Pat is survived by her brother Michael.

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