Sister Ann Fox

Sister Ann Fox (born Jeralee Ann Fox in 1933) is a Roman Catholic sister, social activist and expert in educational enrichment. She is co-founder and previous executive director of the Paraclete Foundation. She teamed with Barry T. Hynes to create the Paraclete Foundation to provide educational enrichment for at-risk children in South Boston. The Paraclete Foundation, along with South Boston mothers known as the Stella Maris Group created the Paraclete Academy in 1997. The academy is housed in the former St. Augustine’s convent. The Paraclete Academy focuses on elementary and early middle school aged, at-risk children. The Paraclete Academy provides after school enrichment programs in the South Boston community that aims to erase the education disparity between inner city children and their more affluent peers. By Sister Ann’s retirement as executive director in 2012, nearly 1,000 local children had participated in the Paraclete Academy’s programs and over 70 young college graduates had volunteered as full-time teachers in residence.

Sister Ann was born in Jackson, Michigan in 1933 and grew up in rural Scio Township outside of Ann Arbor where she attended public schools. After graduation from the University of Michigan, where she had converted to Catholicism, she moved to New York City in 1953 which at the time was a center of Catholic intellectual life and social activism. Her interest in social activism sprouted early. She studied Social Work at Fordham University.

In 1961 she entered Sisters of Charity. The order focused on serving the poor, offering Sister Ann the perfect opportunity to combine her two great passions: Catholicism and social activism. Sister Ann's time as a Sister of Charity ended in 1970. At the time she was in Boston heading a social work clinic in the now closed Nazareth Home for Children which was a mission of the Daughters of Charity. Sister Ann was supportive of the Second Vatican Council’s call for renewal of religious life and saw it as a “freeing opportunity for the sisters to live and work more closely with the communities they served. Sister Ann decided to take advantage of an ancient rite of the early Church for consecration of virgins that was restored by Vatican II, and in 1974 was consecrated by Humberto Cardinal Mediros of Boston and sent for with his blessings to become a sister living in the world, supporting herself, and ministering in the community.

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