Independent Voices — Faith & Shareholder Advocates
The Sisters of the Holy Names
Congregation des Sœurs des Saints Noms de Jésus et de Marie · Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary
Catholic religious congregation · Founded 1843, Longueuil, Québec · Member of the ICCRICCRThe Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility — a coalition of 300+ faith- and values-based institutional investors that uses shareholder resolutions to press corporations toward accountability. · Plaintiff against UnitedHealth Group
Section I · Who They Are
A Teaching Order, 180 Years Old
The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary were founded in 1843 in Longueuil, Québec, by Eulalie Durocher — later beatified as Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher — at a time when the surrounding countryside had almost no schools. The congregation was created to educate girls, rich and poor alike, and grew into an international order of Catholic sisters working across North America and beyond.
Their stated mission today reaches past the classroom: the full development of the human person through education, social justice, contemplation, and the arts — with an explicit commitment to solidarity with the impoverished and marginalized, the promotion of justice and human rights, and the protection of the environment.
That commitment is not only spoken. Like many religious congregations, the Sisters practice responsible investing and shareholder advocacy — engaging the corporations they hold shares in through dialogue and resolutions. They have taken corporate stands affirming that water is a human right and advocating for migrants and refugees. When they bought a stake in UnitedHealth Group, it was in that same tradition: ownership as a means of asking a company to answer for itself.
Section II · What They Did · March 20, 2026
They Asked UnitedHealth a Question. Then They Sued to Make It Answer.
As lead filer for a coalition of ICCRICCRThe Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility — a coalition of 300+ faith- and values-based institutional investors that uses shareholder resolutions to press corporations toward accountability. investors, the Congregation submitted a shareholder proposal asking UnitedHealth Group's board to publish a report on the healthcare impacts of its acquisition and vertical-integration strategy over the last decade. The concern, in their words: that the company's vertical integration "creates risks for the healthcare system, which are amplified by the company's status as the nation's largest health insurer."
UnitedHealth moved to keep the proposal off its proxy entirely, calling it "ordinary business" and an attempt to "micromanage" the company. A November 2025 change in SEC policy — under which the agency stopped reviewing such requests and simply issued "No Objection" letters — let the company omit it with a rubber stamp. So on March 20, 2026, the Sisters did the thing that makes this profile belong in the Remedy Room: they filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the proposal back onto the ballot.
"Last year we submitted our resolution with UnitedHealth because we knew that sunlight is the best disinfectant and that shareholders have a right to clarity around how strategic decisions made by corporate leaders will impact the value of their shares and the wider sector in which they operate. Rather than work with us on our reasonable request, UnitedHealth decided to try and exploit the ongoing lack of both vigilance and commitment to accountability on the part of the SEC's current leadership."
— Timnit Ghermay, representing the Congregation des Sœurs des Saints Noms de Jésus et de Marie, March 20, 2026
"UnitedHealth's attempt to keep this proposal out of public view combines bad faith and bad behavior. There are good reasons to be concerned that the acquisition strategies UnitedHealth has employed have led to less competition across the sector and a harsher and more expensive healthcare sector for patients and their families."
— Meg Jones-Monteiro, Senior Director for Health Equity, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
Section III · Why It Matters
The Anybody Turned Out to Be Nuns
The actor who finally dragged this question into a federal courtroom is not a senator, a billionaire, or a viral account. It is a congregation of religious sisters who hold no corporate power and are not even ordained — using the one lever they had, their shares, to make the largest health insurer in America account for what its strategy does to patients. That is what makes them belong here. The fight does not always advance from the top. Sometimes it advances from the overlooked, doing the unglamorous, principled thing precisely because the powerful won't.
Their demand is the same one documented across the Problem Room: that the human cost of UnitedHealth's machine be counted and disclosed. The Sisters asked for it as owners. The lawsuit is what happened when the company said no.
Where This Connects
The Sisters' lawsuit is one of the three pillars of the documented argument that the body count exists, has been demanded, and has never been produced — alongside the AMA's physician-reported harm data and S.3829, the federal bill whose investigative authority would actually make the count.
Read "The Count No One Will Make" →