Leisa Maria Carzon's book tells the story of Sr. Dede Byrne, POSC, a hero both on the battlefield and in pro-life ministry
DETROIT — In the fall of 2020, Leisa Marie Carzon, Ph.D., was on the front lines of the pro-life movement in Michigan.
Carzon, who today is director of the Catholic School Leadership graduate program and an assistant professor at Madonna University in Livonia, was serving as state director of Catholic Vote for Michigan, an organization working to promote pro-life policies, and was running into apathy from voters who seemed unconcerned with the fate of the unborn.
“I remember people saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want to get involved, you know.’ They were apprehensive to get involved. They’re saying they were gonna sit it out. They weren’t going to vote,” recalled Carzon, who also serves as president and chair of the board of the Heart of Christ Clinic in Detroit.
With the world in the grips of a pandemic, Carzon recalled feeling concerned and a bit dejected about the future of the pro-life movement.
So when she saw a religious sister stand up on a stage during a national convention that fall, holding up a rosary and a message of hope, a flood of emotions followed.
“She said, ‘I’m not just pro-life. I’m pro-eternal life,’" Carzon recalled the sister saying. "I literally cheered in my living room. I wanted to know who this woman was.”
So impressed with the woman’s fearlessness on stage, Carzon decided she needed to find her. Not only did she find Sr. Deirdre (Dede) Byrne, POSC, but she wrote her biography, "Sister, Soldier, Surgeon: The Life and Courage of Sister Deirdre Byrne, M.D.," published by Sophia Institute Press in 2024.
When she met the formidable Sr. Byrne, Carzon said she thanked her for being “a voice for the voiceless.” Not only was she courageous, but witty.
“So I just thanked her for her courage in the public square, and I asked her if I could shadow her for the purposes of writing a book," Carzon said. "Do you know what her response was? ‘You must be writing a comic book!’”
Notwithstanding her request that Carzon wait “until I’m dead,” Sr. Byrne, who is superior of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Washington, D.C., agreed to be shadowed for a week and interviewed for the biography.
Growing up in a devout Catholic family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Sr. Byrne joined the U.S. Army in 1978 as a medical student, serving three decades in the military and retiring with the rank of colonel in 2009.
She completed surgical training and medical school at Georgetown University, completing her board certification in 2000. Just a year later, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she went to New York to serve in a first-aid tent and dispense medical supplies and aid to support firefighters and first responders.
While already deep into her dual career as a doctor and military officer, she answered the call to a religious vocation in 2002, inspired in part by Mother Teresa, for whom she provided medical services during the saint's visit to the United States in 1997.
Sr. Byrne's formation was interrupted when the Army called her back as a reservist in 2003, and she was deployed three times over six years, including to Afghanistan, where she served those wounded in war.
Two years after her retirement in 2011, she professed final vows at long last.
Today, Sr. Byrne runs a pro-bono physical therapy and medical clinic in the lower level of a convent in Washington, D.C., making it part of her vocation to help women reverse the effects of mifepristone, a chemical abortion drug frequently given to women as the first of a series of abortion pills.
In the process of researching and writing for the biography, Carzon said she couldn’t help but be changed.
“One of the most transformative moments of my life,” Carzon said, was when they met a woman while praying outside of the Planned Parenthood.
“As we’re praying the rosary, the women were coming out of Planned Parenthood. (Sr. Byrne) would approach them in full habit from head to toe, and she’d say, ‘In addition to being a sister, I’m a medical doctor. If you just took the RU-486 pill, I can help you reverse it with no harm to you or the baby within 72 hours,’" Carzon said. "And, I was blessed to be there and watch this all unfold.”
Sr. Byrne reports more than an 80 percent success rate in live births after reversal, Carzon said.
In the book, Carzon wrote the stories of three women, but one in particular, whom she calls "Emma," changed her mind after an encounter with Sr. Byrne.
“Emma said to Sister, ‘I’m a Catholic. I haven’t been to confession since I was 9 years old, but I knew what I was doing was wrong,” Carzon recalled. “(Sr. Byrne) brought the woman upstairs and says to me, 'Leisa Marie, she’s hungry. She wants to know, will you take her to lunch? She’d love to tell you her story, but first, she wonders if you would take her to confession at the basilica?”
Listening to the woman’s story, and seeing the care and concern with which Sr. Byrne ministered to women in need of compassion, was life-changing, Carzon said.
"I see (Sr. Bryne's approach) as transformative (to) the way we will proceed in the pro-life movement moving forward, and that is ministering to and accompanying hurting women,” Carzon said. “The way she is able to share the truth of Christ and the freedom and the dignity of the human person, she has an incredible way of doing that.”
Whether praying outside abortion clinics, serving in a medical setting, or performing surgery, Sr. Byrne's disarming love is a model for those in pro-life ministry to follow, Carzon said.
“It doesn’t matter what religion you are, she has a way of just witnessing to the love of Christ,” Carzon said. “These women are hurting. They don’t know what to do, they’re panicking in the moment. They’re beautiful women of Christ, some of whom have not yet discovered their dignity as a daughter of the king.”
Carzon said she witnessed Sr. Byrne helping women understand the true definition of freedom, rooted in the love of the Gospel.
"It’s her example for young women as authentic feminism and the living (St. John Paul II)’s feminine genius,” said Carzon, who said her own faith has grown stronger as a result of her interactions with Sr. Byrne.
“It’s a call to emerge from the upper room and follow Sister Dede into the public square, to permeate the culture with beauty, truth, and goodness," Carzon said. "We’re called, as Catholics, to virtue and to action.”
In the course of writing "Sister, Soldier, Surgeon," Carzon learned much about the bold and courageous sister, but the most important lesson, she said, is that "holiness is about loving well and attaining sanctity."
"She makes holiness seem possible," Carzon said. “I will never be a sister, a soldier, or a surgeon — none of us will ever likely be those things — but we can become saints by modeling her virtue and by loving well. It doesn't matter that we're not all going to be famous or called to a national stage, but we are all called to love.”
