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Sister Vicky Larson found inspiration in two women known for shining light: Lady of the Lamp Florence Nightingale and Lady of the Lantern Nano Nagle.

Nightingale is one of history’s most famous nurses. Nagle is the Catholic sister who founded the Presentation Sisters, of which Larson is a member.

Their passion for service inspired Larson throughout her nursing career and as a sister. And they continue to guide her in her new national leadership role as the president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She’ll hold the position for one year and then serve as past president for a year. 

“It’s like being the president of a national board,” said Larson, who is a registered nurse, a certified nurse educator and holds a Ph.D. in nursing.

Like the president of the American Nurses Association or the National Education Association, she leads the organization’s board and represents the group in different professional circles.

Instead of representing educators or nurses, she guides and represents around two-thirds of all Catholic women’s congregations in the United States.

Arguably, it all began with her nursing education at South Dakota State University.

A call to nursing

Larson grew up in Madison, Minnesota. She began working as a nursing assistant in a local nursing home at age 16. Since she really enjoyed the work and South Dakota State was nearby, she enrolled in its nursing program.

“I switched majors a couple of times, but then I came back to my senses and got back into nursing,” she said.

Another strong pull to become a Jackrabbit was its foundation in rural health care. She said training to become a nurse in a rural area is different from learning in a big city hospital.

“I think there’s something — call it the secret sauce, if you want — to having a broad clinical experience. We really wanted to be generalists and to learn care across the lifespan,” she said.

At her first postgraduation job in Tyndall, she was once the nurse for a childbirth and for the new baby’s great-grandfather, who was in hospice in the same hospital.

A call to the sisterhood

Growing up Catholic in a small rural town, she didn’t know any sisters during childhood. The thought came up at SDSU, where she admired Sister Joan Marie Brandner at the Pope Pius XII Newman Center.

“I guess it’s the idea that kept coming back, and I guess that’s how God works,” she said. “I gradually kept getting these little inklings and finally worked up the courage to check it out.”

It wasn’t an easy decision. Larson said she tossed and turned over the decision at night. She compares it to deciding to get married to a particular person.

“You don’t decide that overnight. You gradually get to know a person and think, ‘Is this a good fit?’ That’s kind of how it was for me.”

She visited several communities of sisters, none of which felt right. She found her place with the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Aberdeen.

It’s an apostolic community, which focuses on acts of service. Larson still felt she was called to be a nurse, so that appealed to her, especially since the Presentation Sisters founded many hospitals in South Dakota and co-founded Avera Health with the Benedictine Sisters of Yankton.

Joining a congregation

Becoming a sister is a long process and usually spans from six to eight years. For the first part of her training, Larson moved to Aberdeen to live with the sisters.

While there, she worked in the float pool of the local hospital. Her nursing training came in handy since she said she treated patients across the spectrum and had to be prepared for anything.

The next step was to become a novice for two years. During the second year, she was encouraged to go on a cultural experience. She chose to live in Eagle Butte on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

“I was packing up to go live with the sisters there, and I get this phone call,” Larson remembered. “The voice said, ‘We’re short a (medical-surgical) nursing instructor. How would you like to do that for your service while you’re here?’”

The request from the director of the Presentation College nursing program made Larson nervous since she’d only graduated with her bachelor’s in 1996, a few years before. Once they assured her it would just be the fundamentals, she agreed.

She learned she loved teaching. That set her on her next course in life.

Returning for her master’s

Larson returned to South Dakota State University to get her master’s in nursing education from 2001 to 2005.
She was still joining the Presentation Sisters, and what she learned at that program and in her undergraduate studies would help her as a nurse and a nun.

“I learned about curriculum development and change management, which I use all the time now as president of the LCWR,” she said.

While pursuing her bachelor’s, then-Dean Roberta Olson encouraged her to participate in national and state nursing associations. For the South Dakota state association, Larson was editor of its newsletter. 

“It was a great leadership experience,” she said. “And I got to travel to the national association’s conference. Me from little old Madison, Minnesota, getting that opportunity was a big deal to me.”

It was her time in school and under the mentorship of Olson that taught her about inspiring others and being a leader.

“She taught me about the vision that a person needs to develop to be a leader. How you have to be in touch with the nitty gritty and the daily, but you also have to think about what’s on the horizon for this group.”

She also learned about the importance of listening to all voices from Olson. Listening is an important tool for a nurse doing an assessment of a patient.

“If you don’t listen to what a patient says, you’re going to miss the key action that needs to happen,” Larson said.

It’s one of the many ways her nursing experience overlaps with her current leadership role in Sioux Falls as vice president of the Presentation Sisters and with the conference.

Lighting the way to the future

For many nurses, Florence Nightingale is known as the Lady of the Lamp for bringing light to those injured in the Crimean War.

Nano Nagle was an Irish sister from the 1700s and earned the moniker Lady of the Lantern when she became known for checking on families late into the night, carrying her lantern all around the streets of Cork, Ireland.

“I think about what’s something that makes someone notice someone with a lantern,” Larson said. “It’s really about presence. A nurse can bring healing, and that healing starts with the way the nurse is present with the patient and their family and community.”

She tries to be present in her community and with the Catholic sisters she now represents, especially as fewer women are entering convents now compared to previous decades.

Larson views the decrease of sisters as a sign that the tradition is transforming, not dying.

There may no longer be a nun on every corner in South Dakota, but they’re still inspiring and impacting the state.

“We have the good fortune of having a lot of lay partners, or cojourners. They’re people who have come alongside the sisters and learned about Nano Nagle’s service and applied it to their own lives. They have projects that they’re doing that the sisters aren’t leading but that they may have inspired,” she said.

As president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, she’s thinking a lot about the future of the sisters, just as many nurses are rethinking the next generation of nursing.

“What do we need to do to lift up the next generation of nursing? What do we need to do to hand off the future of nursing? We evolve as sisters just like the nursing profession does,” Larson said.

She will discuss that future this spring when she gets an audience with Pope Leo XIV in Rome as president of the LCWR.

Not bad for a girl from small-town Minnesota.