How a small group of nuns in rural Kansas vex big companies with their investment activism [Video]

ATCHISON, Kan. – Among corporate America’s most persistent shareholder activists are 80 nuns in a monastery outside Kansas City.

Nestled amid rolling farmland, the Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica have taken on the likes of Google, Target and Citigroup — calling on major companies to do everything from AI oversight to measuring pesticides to respecting the rights of Indigenous people.

“Some of these companies, they just really hate us,” said Sister Barbara McCracken, who leads the nuns’ corporate responsibility program. “Because we’re small, we’re just like a little fly in the ointment trying to irritate them.”

At a time when activist investing has become politically polarized, these nuns are no strangers to making a statement. Recently they went viral for denouncing the commencement speech of Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker at the nearby college they cofounded.

When Butker suggested the women graduates of Benedictine Collegewould most cherish their roles as wives and mothers, the nuns – who are …