Nun imprisoned over peace activism, Megan Rice, dies at 91

ROSEMONT, Penn. (AP) — Megan Rice, a nun and Catholic peace activist who spent two years in federal prison while in her 80s after breaking into a government security complex to protest nuclear weapons, has died. She was 91.

Rice died of congestive heart failure Oct. 10 at Holy Child Center in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, according to her order, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.

“Sister Megan lived her life with love full of action and zeal,” said Carroll Juliano, American Province Leader for the order. “Her commitment to build a peaceful and just world was unwavering and selfless.”

Rice was born in New York to activist parents who would meet with well-known Catholic writer Dorothy Day during the Great Depression to craft solutions for societal problems, she said in a 2013 interview with the Catholic Agitator.

Her activism was also heavily influenced by her uncle, who spent four months in Nagasaki, Japan, after it and Hiroshima had been leveled by atomic bombs to hasten the end of World War II, bombings that Rice would later call the “greatest shame in history."

While still a teenager, she entered the Society of the Holy Child of Jesus to become a nun. She made her final vows in 1955 and took on the religious name Mother Frederick Mary. Rice later earned degrees from Villanova and Boston University, where she earned a Master of Science.

She taught at elementary schools in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for more than a decade before being assigned to work in Nigeria.

Rice spent 23 years in West Africa working as a teacher and pastoral guide. It was there that she started hearing about the plowshares movement, a reference to a Bible passage that refers to the end of all war: "They will beat their swords into ploughshares."

When she returned to the U.S., Rice...