Remembering Sister Anne Thompson of the Daughters of Jesus

The late Sr Anne Thompson had her funeral last Wednesdau in Margate in the Archdiocese of Southwark. Her passing is significant because of the life she lived and the global contribution she made to healthcare

It is also significant for what it tells us about one of the ways in which the ‘Catholic social teaching community’ in the UK risks becoming too narrow (or too self – dramatising).

Sr Anne was a member of the Daughters of Jesus, one of the many religious orders founded in the 19th century Diocese of Vannes, or along the Brittany peninsular, who later found their way to Britain.

She was a convert to Catholicism who trained as a midwife. She had two stints in West Africa working in hospitals. With a focus on neo-natal care, by the time she returned she had assisted and completed as many caesareans as some male British doctors see in a lifetime – ‘needs must’ she once told me.  She had, literally, saved lives.

By 1985 she was Assistant Director of London’s Oliver Hayden School of Midwifery which, today merged with the Cicely Saunders Institute on Palliative Care, forms the heart of the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing at King’s College, London. She played important roles in the Royal College of Midwives.

Crucially, in 1994 she was head-hunted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to take on a leading global role coming to focus on safe pregnancy and motherhood. To put that in context even though there has been a 30 per cent improvement in neo-natal care this century, a woman still dies in childbirth every two minutes with 95 per cent of those deaths in low- and middle-income countries.

Anne played an important part in extending the WHO’s ‘Safe Mothers’ and other programmes and her articles, comment and work are found across its archive. She also became treasurer of the global International Confederation of Midwives. Even after these postings she wrote for the International Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health and other publications often seeking to bridge the gap between ethics and practice in healthcare. She had travelled widely to support her contribution. The British government’s leading advisors on midwifery at the Department of Health told me they trusted her counsel.

Speaking one year at the national Catholic Charities Conference, that time held at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, Anne approached me at the end of my talk from among the several hundred present. She had, she said, glimpsed something important in the International Young Leaders Network that I had recently established. Going on to support its work she was constantly encouraging as it grew to train over 500 young leaders as they emerged from the Christian community towards public service. As part of this support she mentored several young women from around the world at important parts of their life journey . One of these is a leader now in the refugee care sector in East Africa, another in West African higher education and another still in the work of Catholic Charities in the USA. With her encouragement, and that of Sr Mary Clare Mason and others on the Provincial Council, the Daughters of Jesus also enabled other young and emerging leaders to take part through bursaries. Today, one of those bursary recipients is a minister in a European government while another is a key advisor to the President of the European Commission. and another still CEO of a charity supporting orphans in Eastern Europe. Upon hearing that Anne had passed away warm messages came in from former participants on the scheme at home and abroad.

For 12 years Anne was Bursar of her Province and for six years Provincial. Linked to these roles she served on the executive of the Association of Provincial Bursars in Britain and Ireland. This included the period during which government introduced ‘public benefit’ tests on charities for the first time. She worked to get the government to recognise that all an Order’s work had ‘public benefit’ and became interested in the development of new metrics to properly capture the contribution that Orders make. This latter focus was in great part driven by an awareness that even in retirement so many of her fellow Daughters of Jesus made superb contributions. This included work in Peterborough prison but also – Anne would observe passionately – those such as a housebound Sister who, for all her own bodily frailty, was a much cherished and substantial contributor of support, to those at extreme risk, as a counsellor on the phone lines of The Samaritans.

A strong woman who chose Catholicism and Religious life at some personal cost Sister Anne  had an at times wicked sense of humour, She would encourage, disrespectful to some forms of hierarchy, by saying that seeking ‘safety’ in mission only ruins it. But in the constellation of post war British Christian women her contribution was more than this still.

Like the consecrated virgin Dame Sheila Quinn (1920-2017, President of the Royal College of Nursing 1982 to 1986) her influence stretched far beyond the clerical courtly tradition of the Catholic social encyclicals. Instead, it shaped, built and renewed institutions and lines of enquiry for policy that were practically transformative. Like Dame of St Gregory Cicily Saunders (1918 to 2005) her writing and mentorship was not confined only to the domestic conversations of church. Akin to the founder of green economics and Prime Ministerial advisor Barbara Ward (1914 to 1981) she helped shape a new field of social innovation where the stakes for the poorest of the planet were incredibly high. Instinctively she stepped out.

In decades to come we will need to seek out and empower the coming generations of women like these lest the Catholic social teaching community fall inward thinking its main purpose is to merely adapt the church, or talk speculatively about nations,  rather than concretely renew society.

By the life she lived, and her global contribution Sr Anne Thompson DJ raised the bar on what we should expect. She should be remembered with honour.

Sr Anne Thompson DJ, born 7 May 1938, died 9 June 2025.

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