Sister Mary Scullion to step down as head of anti-homelessness nonprofit Project HOME

Sister Mary Scullion, the powerhouse advocate and street angel fueled by enough “bad-ass rebel energy” to minister to multitudes of people experiencing homelessness, will be leaving her job as president and executive director of the nationally renowned Project HOME.

Joan Dawson McConnon, the associate executive director who co-founded the Philadelphia nonprofit with Scullion in 1989, will also be stepping down.

Scullion will remain in her role through Dec. 31, 2024, and will be helping with leadership transition through June 30, 2025. McConnon will stay on through June 30, 2024, then will consult through the end of the year.

“We’ve done the best we can. It’s time for someone else to come in,” Scullion, 70, said during an interview earlier this week, occasionally crying softly. “The work has been such a blessing.”

McConnon, 63, said, “We’ve had a unique relationship, but we both realize it’s really time to move aside.”

In 34 years, Scullion and McConnon grew Project HOME from a winter shelter in South Philadelphia where volunteers washed dishes in a washing machine, to a formidable institution with 1,000 units of housing in 19 residences across the city. The nonprofit has a $52 million operating budget, one million square feet of real estate, dozens of programs, and a staff of 450 that’s helped countless people in need find homes, improve their health, become educated, and get jobs.

Throughout, the duo have adhered to their organization’s now familiar motto: “None of us are home until all of us are home.”

Scullion and McConnon met in 1988 at Mercy Hospice in Center City, which offered services to women experiencing homelessness. McConnon, then a 27-year-old graduate student at Drexel University studying taxation, did volunteer work there, but thought the system of helping those in need was dysfunctional. A nun named Sister Claire suggested McConnon voice her complaints to Scullion, who’d visit friends at the hospice from time to time.

“‘If there’s anyone who’ll break the rules to help people,’” McConnon recalled Sister Claire telling her, “‘it’s Mary.’” They spoke, and Scullion and McConnon have been breaking and making the rules ever since.

“Sister Mary is an angel,” said Wes Mitchell, 61, of Phoenixville, who’d lived homeless for years before moving into a Project HOME residence in Center City in 2015. “This organization that she and Miss Joan built help people like me feel like they’re people again — not just discarded.”

Years ago, colleagues said, Scullion and McConnon devised their working dynamic: McConnon would remain in the background, where she’s more comfortable, while Scullion would be publicly visible, addressing the media and interacting with politicians and philanthropists, including one rock star, Jon Bon Jovi.

McConnon lives in Springfield, Delaware County, with her husband, Mark, a middle school English teacher. They have three grown children. Scullion, born into a working-class family near Oxford Circle, lives in a North Philadelphia Project HOME residence for young adults aging out of foster care.

Unassuming and self-deprecating, Scullion graduated from St. Joseph’s University in 1976 and Temple University’s School of Social Work in 1987. She’s part of a Roman Catholic order known as Sisters of Mercy. In addition to the three vows — poverty, chastity and obedience — that all Catholic nuns take, Sisters of Mercy also take a fourth vow, of service.

In performing that service, Scullion is famous for being tireless and tough.

“Believe me, if she needs to tell you off, she will,” said Sam Santiago, the former Philadelphia police officer who’s long worked on Project HOME’s outreach team.

Paul Levy, president and CEO of the Center City District who’s worked (and occasionally argued) with Scullion for years, said, “Mary’s pragmatic, and has been blunt and down-to-earth while creating humane, well-run programs.” Laughing, he added, “And Mary swears, if you want to know.”

Santiago dismissed that. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We all know Sister Mary is going straight to heaven.”

Estelle Richman, president of Project HOME’s board of directors, now faces a daunting personnel problem.

“It’s the scariest thing,” she said. “How do you replace an icon? Sister Mary told me that helping people experiencing homelessness is a mission from God. How do you fill that job?”

Nationally known, Scullion was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most-influential people in 2009. She’s won the University of Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, American Catholicism’s highest honor.

She’s huddled with former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former first lady Michelle Obama, and Pope Francis; been a guest of U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Philadelphia) at the 2020 State of the Union address; and met with the late former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Prince Charles. Her successful partnership with New Jersey rock star and philanthropist Bon Jovi is as celebrated a pairing as it is unlikely.

“Mary can chat with queens, she can chat with a janitor,” Project HOME trustee Lynne Honickman told The Inquirer in 2010. “And they both get the same person.” Honickman’s family has given several million dollars to the nonprofit.

Scullion lived homeless for a week in 1978 to understand the life-depleting travail of sleeping in the open. During her early years, she led demonstrators into City Council chambers, set up protest encampments at 30th Street Station, and was arrested for civil disobedience efforts a reported four times.

Throughout, her moral authority has remained unquestioned.

“Sister Mary has navigated political and cultural minefields,” said Saint Joseph’s sociologist Maria Kefalas, who’s sent numerous students to Project HOME to intern for her school’s famous alum.

“She’s a religious woman in the conservative Catholic church interfacing with folks on the left and right, dealing with racial politics, drugs in Kensington, multimillion-dollar philanthropies, celebrities. She models a Catholicism that’s decent and good, and she shields her work from ugly tribal squabbles.

“It’s extraordinary, and I don’t know anyone else who can do it. She’s a powerhouse advocate, and her retirement is stunning. I can’t imagine Philadelphia without her.”

Liz Hersh, executive director of the Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services, said simply: “Philadelphia is a better place because of her. Other cities are criminalizing homelessness, but Mary’s fought that here and in doing so, has changed the world.”

Scullion has influenced others in her field.

“The advocates of today stand on Sister Mary’s shoulders and continue to be inspired by the bad-ass rebel energy she had in the 1980s,” said Stephanie Sena, an anti-poverty fellow at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law, who created a homeless shelter in Upper Darby last year.

In 2010, Sena told Villanova she wanted to start a student-run homeless shelter. The school balked, said Sena, and would sign off only if Scullion gave her blessing.

Sena said Scullion used expletives to express her displeasure with Villanova’s apparent reticence.

Not long after, Scullion was being given an award at Villanova. As she spoke, Sena remembers, Scullion told the audience, without having consulted the school, “‘This is the first university in our area that will be running a homeless shelter, with Stephanie at the helm.’”

Villanova said OK, and Scullion contributed $40,000 to the shelter.

“Bad-ass,” Sena repeated.

People take delight in Scullion’s improbable partnership with Bon Jovi, and the good works they’ve done together.

“Sister Mary is close to people who are do-ers, and he is,” said Edel Howlin, who worked in communications for Project HOME between 2019 and 2021. She wrote speeches for Scullion and Bon Jovi to publicize his multimillion-dollar support of the nonprofit, including his contributions toward JBJ Soul Homes, 51 units of affordable housing in Fairmount.

“They’re like-minded individuals, driven and focused,” she said.

“Jon’s an amazing, incredibly thoughtful human being,” Scullion has said.

“She’s my patron saint,” Bon Jovi has told people, singing her praises whenever he can, including on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2020.

As it happens, the “saint” idea isn’t limited to Bon Jovi. Others have floated it, with varying degrees of seriousness.

Santiago of Project HOME’s outreach is on board:

“She does the things only saints do, like going out at night when nobody else knows it to try to get people on the street to come in, or paying for the burials of formerly homeless people.

“She’s been performing miracles in Philadelphia a long time. Sainthood? Sister Mary gets my vote.”