Another mass shooting, another spate of thoughts and prayers. A group of sisters and their supporters are working to reignite a sense of urgency in the face of America’s gun violence epidemic. 

The prayer service began with a litany of the names of the fallen: 

• Damarion Bailey, 15, Homestead, Florida, allegedly shot by his 18-year-old friend for reasons that remain unclear 

• Isaac Rodriguez, 15, Milwaukee, allegedly murdered by shooters who rode by via scooter, killing Isaac and a friend who were walking down a city street 

• Justin Robinson, 16, Madison, Tennessee, shot during a dispute between two groups of youths at a community center 

• and, among 11 in all, infant Andre Lanns III of Deerfield Beach, Florida, a victim of an attempted murder-suicide. 

Cobbled together from local news reports, the listing of those young people murdered by gun violence represented the casualties of just another early summer week in America. 

But this virtual prayer service featured more than appeals to God to stop the violence. Those praying on a Zoom call were members of Nuns Against Gun Violence (NunsAgainstGunViolence.org). These religious sisters and their friends believe fervently in the power of prayer, but with a caveat that action is needed. The litany served not only as an appeal to the divine but also as a jolting reminder that gun violence is too much a part of American life. For Nuns Against Gun Violence, thoughts and prayers are a beginning, not an end. 

From Apathy to Action 

The group was formed in 2023 to overcome apathy surrounding gun violence. Members want to galvanize action against guns, particularly in the Catholic community, promoting an urgency about an issue that for too many Americans has become the norm. 

While some mass shootings still generate media attention, the steady drumbeat of individual killings largely goes unnoticed. Many involve young people whose lives, such as those in the litany, never had a chance to get started. 

The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks incidents of gun violence in the United States, reported 43,069 gun-related deaths in 2023, compared to 47,452 the previous year. The numbers show a decline, but the sisters believe that progress has not been swift enough. 

Mass shootings increased from 644 in 2022 to 656 in 2023. In 2024, mass shootings—defined as incidents where four or more people are killed or wounded—continued to number more than one every day. 

A Trusted Voice 

There is no lack of groups opposed to the epidemic of guns in a country where there are now more firearms than people. But Ursuline Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe of Cleveland says Nuns Against Gun Violence provides a unique perspective. 

“Sisters taught us our faith. We trust you,” relays Sister Sheila Marie about the laypeople she hears from, nearly 30,000 via social media and personal contact among alums of the schools sponsored by her community as well as others attracted by the congregation’s advocacy for social justice. Via prayer, letter-writing campaigns to public officials calling for more gun control, and massive billboards—including those in Cleveland and other cities in Ohio—Nuns Against Gun Violence embraces anyone who wants to get involved, whether vowed religious or not. 

“We are getting the message out in every way we can,” says Sister Sheila Marie. 

Sister Sheila Marie knows the impact of gun violence firsthand. Reflecting on her ministry in El Salvador and urban Cleveland, she can count more than two dozen incidents of people who have died from shootings, most of them youths. They include a top-flight graduate from a Cleveland parochial school, just barely a teenager, murdered in a car, apparently by a drug dealer; Cleveland police officer Derek Wayne Owens, shot in 2008 while pursuing a suspect; and a young man in El Salvador murdered on the streets after returning from that country’s long civil war, an apparent act of vengeance carried out by a warring party unable to accept a truce. 

She has seen up close young men in Cleveland and El Salvador brandishing weapons in shows of bravado. Those displays rarely end well and need to stop, she says. “Anyone who cares about human beings needs to fight this issue and get guns under control,” she says. 

A Challenge to Catholics 

The group’s message is backed by the Church hierarchy. The litany of mass shootings known by shorthand of Parkland (Florida), Sandy Hook (Connecticut) and Las Vegas (Nevada) generated swift calls for gun control from local bishops. And the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has noted that the right to bear arms should not be an unqualified license for anyone to own guns. 

Pope Francis has been direct. In his response to the 2022 killings of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, he pleaded, “Enough to the indiscriminate trafficking of guns.” In response to that same tragedy, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, urging gun control, wrote on Twitter that the constitutional right to bear arms did not come from God on Mount Sinai and should be open to change. 

In a letter to Congress a week after the Uvalde shootings, leading US bishops urged action that “addresses all aspects of the crisis, including mental health, the state of families, the valuation of life, the influence of entertainment and gaming industries, bullying, and the availability of firearms.” They called for “the passage of reasonable gun control measures,” echoing the plea of Pope Francis that “it is time to say ‘no more’ to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons.” 

While the Church’s position is clear, Nuns Against Gun Violence remains frustrated that so many Catholics either oppose gun control measures or are content to stay on the sidelines, offering prayers and thoughts after each tragedy. 

One goal of the group is to spotlight the issue in parishes and Catholic institutions. Homilies, publications, and calls for action on gun violence need to become a part of Catholic life, says the group. 

“When was the last time you heard a homily on gun violence?” says Angela Howard-McParland, a laywoman and a social justice advocate for the Sisters of Mercy and a founding member of Nuns Against Gun Violence. She says that relatively few churchgoing Catholics hear much in their parishes about what Nuns Against Gun Violence considers a primary pro-life issue. Too few Catholics, she says, connect their faith commitment to the cause of what she calls “common sense, evidence-based” controls on guns. 

Franciscan Sister Maria Orlandini works in Washington, DC, with the Franciscan Action Network, a Catholic social justice advocacy group. She is an original member of Nuns Against Gun Violence and part of the group’s steering committee. 

Sisters, she says, can provide a missing voice in the debate: “Our Catholic Church needs to talk more about it. We are trying to give it a bigger voice. A faith voice in our world is needed.” 

Advocating for Common Sense Gun Control 

Formed during the 2023 national Leadership Conference of Women Religious meeting in St. Louis, the group began with about 40 congregations of religious communities. That number has increased to 60. The goal is to unify and multiply advocacy among sisters of various congregations. 

While enthusiasm to curb gun violence is high among sisters, politically the issue regularly runs into dead ends, both in Congress and in statehouses. The United States is one of few nations in the world to have written the right to bear arms into its Constitution. Gun ownership is a part of the national DNA. And groups such as the National Rifle Association continue to flex their muscle in opposing curbs, organizing gun owners to vote against political leaders who support gun controls, and providing campaign funds for its supporters. 

While the issue generates controversy, there is widespread consensus on measures that could help, even if they sometimes run afoul of pro-gun rights groups. Nuns Against Gun Violence is advocating for legislation that would address issues such as: 

• Suicide, with shootings as the number one cause of death. Proponents of curbs on guns argue that guns are a reason so many suicide attempts are successful, with those who use them succeeding 90 percent of the time in killing themselves, far more than any other method. According to the Centers for Disease Control, six out of every 10 gun-related deaths are suicides. The sisters view gun violence as a public health issue. 

• Curtailing deaths of young people. Gun violence is now the number one cause of death among youths under 18, surpassing disease or car accidents. 

• Gun security. Ethan’s Law, now languishing in Congress, would mandate that gun owners safely secure their weapons in a bid to lower the rate of accidental shootings. Millions of American children are raised in homes with firearms. 

• Red flag laws, which prevent those with mental health or criminal records from owning guns. Groups such as Nuns Against Gun Violence want to increase their breadth, making sure that those with serious mental health issues are denied guns. 

• Placing more restrictions on exports of guns. While much attention is placed on guns that come north from Mexico into the United States, Nuns Against Gun Violence notes that the traffic is actually heavier in the other direction. Weaponry produced in the United States fuels much of the gang and drug wars in Latin America and the Caribbean, they say. The sisters support a lawsuit by the Mexican government against American gun manufacturers. Some congregations are part of an effort to invest in gun companies such as Smith & Wesson and present shareholder resolutions that question their policies. 

The investing sisters’ groups regularly push Smith & Wesson to stop marketing guns to children via video games and to change production methods to make guns harder to modify, which can make them even more deadly and rapid-fire. 

These efforts are relatively piecemeal. Still it remains difficult to enact many of these measures, in statehouses as well as Congress. More ambitious plans have generated even greater opposition. Perhaps the most important gun control issue is a proposed ban on automatic weapons, which was in place for 10 years beginning in 1994 until Congress let it lapse. 

Proponents of gun control blame the lapse of what was called the Brady Bill—named for James Brady, the late press secretary for Ronald Reagan, shot in the assassination attempt on the president—as a prime reason why mass shootings continue to afflict America. They say that weapons of war are used to kill scores of innocent people, including schoolchildren, concertgoers, and office workers. During the time of the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down but have increased markedly since. 

Fasting and Prayer 

While advocacy remains a focus, the sisters say that spirituality plays a key role in their efforts. The group sponsors anti-gun Lenten programs focusing on fasting and prayer. Other times of the year the sisters promote campaigns to wear orange, a symbol of the anti-gun movement. Fasting against gun violence is a spiritual practice promoted by the sisters, who would like to see it become a part of American parish life. 

Nuns Against Gun Violence says that in fasting, those who participate are offering “a small sacrifice in solidarity with all those suffering from gun violence.” Last Lent, members began their fast on Ash Wednesday with a noon online prayer, Scripture reading, silence, and a reflection, a practice they will continue. 

Fasting is “a public prayer that purifies not only the one fasting but the entire community, preparing us to stand our ground against the powers and principalities,” the group noted in a 2024 press release. Whether via prayer, social action, or both, the sisters remain committed to overcoming the apathy and indifference about what they see as a clear and present danger in our midst. In its appeal for their Lenten fast against killings, Nuns Against Gun Violence asks those participating to do more than pray. “The loss of life and continuous toll of grief and trauma on individuals, families, and communities compel us to take action to change our society to protect life,” the group noted. 

By combining prayer with action, Nuns Against Gun Violence’s hope is that, one day, prayers will no longer be needed to mark the deaths of youths and that the listing of victims in any routine week in America will be empty. The sisters have a long way to go. 

For over three decades, Franciscans International has been giving the poor and oppressed a seat at the table at the United Nations. 

Whether it be children attacked in Benin or villagers in Amazon hamlets swamped with pollution from rapacious mining, Franciscans International is championing its cause at the United Nations. 

Organized in 1989 to lobby for social justice and peace in the tradition of St. Francis, Franciscans International remains part of the chorus of those seeking a just and more peaceful world. It brings the insights of the Italian saint from Assisi as well as the experience of Franciscans around the world to today’s global issues. 

Its impact is felt beyond the headlines, as the organization quietly lobbies to improve conditions for the poor and oppressed throughout the world, wherever Franciscans minister. 

Franciscans live and work close to the poor, often forced to confront issues that impact those they serve. In response, Franciscans International represents a wide berth of Franciscan communities, from Capuchins to Conventuals to Third Order members, as well as communities of Franciscan sisters, serving in the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. 

Capuchin Franciscan Benedict Ayodi works for Franciscans International out of its Manhattan headquarters in a converted apartment filled with reminders—including a massive wall map of the Amazon region—of the group’s connection to the developing world. 

Father Ayodi, a Kenyan, is the organization’s outreach officer. He says the Franciscans bring an unparalleled vision of the world to the United Nations. “Franciscans are a large family who work with so many poor people and people in need throughout the world,” he says. 

Father Joseph Rozansky, OFM, board president, has been part of Franciscans International since its inception and has long been involved in justice ministries in Rome. The friar formerly served as a missionary in Brazil. 

He is a promoter of using UN structures to address world problems. “It seemed to me a no-brainer that Franciscans should be involved at the United Nations, where many of our values are promoted on the world stage,” he says. 

Inspired by St. Francis

Franciscans International works beyond regional concerns to address universal issues, congruent with the vision of St. Francis. 

The man from Assisi has been celebrated for centuries for his concern for the poor, peaceful dialogue with Muslims and others, and his love of creation. All of it inspires Franciscans International, says Father Rozansky. 

“Our founder was very concerned with peace, with the impoverished, and with the planet,” Father Rozansky says. “We, the followers of Francis, are called to continue promoting these values in the world and, more specifically, at the United Nations.” 

Today’s issues are very different, but the ideals of Francis continue to permeate the group’s lobbying efforts. 

It’s been 800 years since Francis of Assisi walked through Europe and the Middle East. In his day, he was never forced to confront the massive industrial environmental degradation common in today’s world. Even so, St. Francis made a point of his friendships with God’s creatures, including birds and a much-feared wolf. Now Franciscans International is channeling that concern for creation into modern environmental activism to save the world from human-caused degradation. 

Father Markus Heinze has been involved in international peace and justice work with the Church since the 1980s and has long served in leadership for Franciscans International. He is currently the executive director in the organization’s Geneva offices—where the United Nations has a strong presence—but will be passing the torch of leadership to Blair Matheson, TSSF, in January. The Franciscan brand speaks credibly to a world seeking justice, says Father Heinze. 

“From my experience, I can say that people trust Franciscans, in particular when it comes to issues related to care of creation and people living in extreme poverty,” he says. “Franciscans are close to the ordinary people and understand their problems.” 

Pope Francis has called upon Catholics to bring the Gospel to the world and to focus more outwardly on global issues rather than on internal Church concerns. Father Heinze notes how the pope regularly describes the mission of the Church as not looking inward but of identifying with those who suffer. The United Nations and Franciscans International are a perfect match in that regard. 

Why the United Nations?

It’s not to say that the United Nations doesn’t have its detractors. 

The United Nations has been denounced for not doing enough to prevent wars and address poverty. Some critics suggest the organization is a tool for the richest and most powerful countries to exert their might. Others criticize it for passing high-minded resolutions with little follow-up and carrying on debates in the cloistered campus on New York’s East Side while conflicts rage around the world. Authoritarian governments frequently support resolutions that endorse human rights initiatives in other nations while political opponents are oppressed in their home countries. 

New Yorkers in particular seethe each year when the UN General Assembly meets in the fall, clogging already overcrowded city streets with limousines and SUVs. The presence of diplomats and world leaders enjoying the city’s highest-priced restaurants is reported each year. Member nation fees, including those from the United States, are often seen as a waste of money. 

But Father Heinze continues to see the United Nations as invaluable in bringing world leaders together, even if they don’t always move quickly on addressing injustices. No other organization has such a universal reach. 

“The United Nations is, of course, to be questioned in many ways, but it is the only place where all the world comes together to look at and deal with the challenges humanity faces,” he says. The ideals of the organization, articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, dovetail with Christian and Franciscan values, says Father Heinze. 

Franciscans International brings human rights and other issues to the wider attention of the world through the work of the United Nations. And, as it did with the cause of the children in Benin, Franciscans International can place a global spotlight on local issues. 

“I would say that we can have the most impact by focusing on countries and issues that are not on the priority list of the international community and where Franciscans on the ground are directly involved,” Father Heinze says. “Just to follow the mainstream and concentrate on issues like the wars in Syria or Ukraine, or the issues around COVID-19, will just add one more voice to the many.” 

Some of the work that Franciscans International does cannot be publicized due to its sensitive nature. Behind the scenes, the group is working with Franciscans in some African countries to highlight injustices that, if publicly advocated, could put activists at risk. 

Father Michael Perry, OFM, served with Franciscans International and worked for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on human rights issues. Father Perry, an Indiana native and former general minister for the worldwide Orders of Friars Minor, previously served as a missionary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He retains an interest in African issues and is a member of the board of Franciscans International. 

Franciscan Witness

He believes that the Franciscan charism has much to say on world issues. 

“We bring credibility, because, despite our weaknesses and challenges, we Franciscans place the human person, the dignity of all, including the created universe, at the center of our vocation and missionary work wherever we might find ourselves,” Father Perry says. 

Franciscans International relies strongly on the witness of Franciscans who are willing to take on, sometimes at great risk, issues pertaining to exploitation of the poor and the ravaging of the environment, he says. Local governments and large corporations often prefer to let the issues remain dormant. Speaking up can pose dangers. 

“I remain amazed by the courage of our brothers of the order, and of the entire Franciscan family, to not run away from difficulties, even in cases where they face personal threat to their own lives, choosing communion and solidarity over fear and care only for self,” says Father Perry. 

Bringing these concerns for social justice and the environment to the United Nations makes sense, despite the organization’s well-known shortcomings, say Franciscans International leaders. 

“There is no other venue, no other system or structure that brings together virtually all of the nations of the world to pursue dialogue, collaboration, and to seek sustainable solutions to endemic poverty, global health challenges, conflicts and wars, and to alter the human impact on destruction of the environment and negative contribution to climate change and global warming,” says Father Perry. 

Franciscans International sees a need for reforms to the structure of the United Nations itself. Among those issues, says Father Perry, is changing the veto power that the five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) hold over effective international action. That structure was developed at the beginning of the organization, based upon the will of the dominant powers in the immediate post-World War II world. The world has changed drastically since, and smaller, less prosperous nations need a stronger voice at the United Nations, say Franciscans International leaders. 

But they see progress even within the shortcomings of the current structure. 

Father Ayodi says there is value in getting governments to agree to make changes, even if at times they will fall short of UN goals. Articulating ideals can have a practical purpose. Getting governments on the record allows activists to point out where improvements need to be made. One example was when governments signed on to 17 goals of sustainable development, with improvements in sanitation, education, and income equity, among other concerns, to be implemented by 2030. 

“It helps for countries to be focused and also to be held accountable,” says Father Ayodi. 

Meanwhile, Franciscans around the world continue their ministries. They will be listening to their people whenever injustice abounds. Franciscans International will continue to have listening posts in regions of the world that rarely make headlines in the Western media but where Catholics working for justice and environmental protection remain active. 

“At least there is a voice,” says Father Ayodi. 

That voice exists in the halls and offices of the United Nations as well as in tiny hamlets in impoverished places in the world in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere—wherever Franciscans are engaged in spreading the Gospel. 

The people who live in those remote places where Franciscans minister are often not heard, yet are still able to retain their voice in the corridors of power at the United Nations, thanks to the lobbying efforts of Franciscans International. 

“Where no one wants to go, you will find a Franciscan,” says Father Ayodi.  

Sidebar: A Voice for People Around the World

Whether advocating for young people in the slums of Kenya, communities facing a blighted water supply in Brazil, or the poor in Quebec, Franciscans International stands with those they serve. The following are examples of the organization’s global reach. 

Africa 

Capuchin Franciscan Benedict Ayodi first discovered the work of Franciscans International back home in Kenya in 2008, when hundreds were killed as the result of political turmoil after a disputed election. Father Ayodi wanted to minister in a neighborhood deeply affected by the killings. The police told him not to go, saying it was too dangerous, but he insisted. 

There, Father Ayodi found a church where “the people were waiting for Mass. The only hope for them was to pray for peace.” 

Their deep faith that God could help inspired him. Father Ayodi offered Mass, augmenting prayers for peace with action. 

At a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Father Ayodi urged the international community to do something about the crisis in his country. The late Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general, was enlisted to mediate the conflict, and the effort paid off with peaceful negotiations. Post-election peace prevailed. 

In the West African nation of Benin, Franciscans International pushed for world attention on an Indigenous practice in which children—often those with disabilities or with physical attributes different from the majority population—would be labeled as witches and then bullied or, in some cases, killed. Albino children were particularly targeted, as were children with autism. UN action pressured the Benin government to outlaw the persecution. 

Franciscans International also assisted young people in the Mukuru slum of Nairobi, Kenya, training them to implement water sanitation policies, an issue of grave concern throughout the developing world. 

Environment and the Amazon 

Inspired by St. Francis and Pope Francis, Franciscans International has lobbied to make an impact on the world’s environmental crisis. Franciscans International has focused on stopping multinational mining companies from pillaging the environment in countries such as Brazil. 

Much of the information they use in arguing their claims comes from Franciscans on the ground, in particular the extensive Franciscan presence in the Amazon. Taking a cue from Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’” encyclical, Franciscans International has joined the international clamor for action on climate change that culminated in the Paris Accords. 

Father Joseph Rozansky, OFM, board president for Franciscans International, notes that Franciscans see up close the fallout from massive mining in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Brazil. When mining operations degrade the local water supply or fail to treat workers justly, Franciscans ministering in those countries experience it firsthand and look for Franciscans International to galvanize world concern. 

Europe, North America, and Latin America 

Franciscans International has joined with others to promote a proposed law to eliminate poverty in the Canadian province of Quebec; worked with homeless families seeking land ownership in Uberlândia, Brazil; supported efforts by the local government in Strasbourg, France, to improve conditions for the Roma population there; and encouraged birth registration in the Amazon region of Bolivia, helping the government better plan the use of scarce resources. 

“Don’t quit,” a Vatican official once told Phyllis Zagano. She took his advice and continues to advocate for ordaining women as deacons in the Catholic Church. 

Phyllis Zagano, PhD, perhaps the world’s leading advocate for ordaining women as deacons in the Catholic Church, experienced an epiphany back in 1978. 

At the time, she was attending Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, New York, intent on training for ministry and was the only female student in the graduate-level seminary theology program. 

Archbishop Jean Jadot, then-apostolic delegate, the pope’s representative in the United States, came for a visit. It was a VIP occasion. Zagano’s fellow students, seminarians studying for the priesthood, were decked out in the house cassock and sash vestments. She wore a yellow corduroy pantsuit and placed herself unobtrusively in the nosebleed seats. 

The hosting bishop, the late John McGann of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, noticed her. 

“Phyllis, what are you doing here?” asked Bishop McGann, known for his friendly and garrulous banter at public events. Bishop McGann recognized Zagano, as he was a high school basketball pal of her father. 

After the ceremonies, Zagano got word that Archbishop Jadot, then a dominant figure in the Church in the United States, one seen as the power behind bishop appointments, wanted to see her. 

He asked her what she was doing in the seminary, and she replied that she was studying with a goal of being ordained a deacon. “Don’t quit,” Archbishop Jadot told her. She hasn’t. 

Zagano moved on from the seminary in pursuit of other academic achievements, but she hasn’t quit the cause of ordaining women as deacons. The author of scores of articles and five books on the subject, she has remained in the Catholic fold, intently lobbying bishops, priests, deacons, and whoever will listen. She argues that Church tradition allows for ordaining women as deacons. 

Even after Pope John Paul II definitively ruled out ordaining women as priests in 1994, Zagano remained undaunted. 

Phoebe’s Example

Zagano has made the case that the diaconate is different. The historical legacy indicates that the Church can ordain women as deacons. It is a matter of the Church’s willingness to recapture tradition, not break from it, she argues. 

“The diaconate is very clear in Scripture,” she says. The only person with the job title is Phoebe. No one else in Scripture is called deacon. In Romans 16:1–2, Paul commends Phoebe’s diaconal ministry.  

For Zagano, the short scriptural reference offers a vein of insight. “Her patronage, one can assume, supported the efforts of the growing Church. With her status affirmed, she is the one not only chosen to carry Paul’s letter to Rome, but also most probably to read and interpret it once she gets to meet with the community there,” Zagano wrote in the Tablet in 2021. 

Phoebe’s example lived on in the early Church up to the 12th century. Scripture scholar Gary Macy argues that female deacons gradually became verboten as the Church began interpreting Old Testament purity laws regarding menstruation as forbidding women to lead religious rituals. The entire order of deacons also eroded—largely due to authority and money issues with priests, Zagano says—until it was revived after Vatican II. 

While women deacons no longer are active, it’s there in the history, she says. The acknowledgement that women once filled that role has been a linchpin for those arguing that the Church can ordain them as deacons once again, particularly in response to pressing pastoral needs. 

Once on the margins, Zagano’s vision may be closer to fruition than ever. Pope Francis has ruled out ordaining women as priests but has said that the diaconate is another question. Zagano served on a Vatican commission to study the issue, spending months researching ancient Church manuscripts, buttressing her arguments. She also talked with bishops and clergy from all over who were eager to describe their need for pastoral ministers. 

That commission dissolved without deciding on the central issue. But a second group has been formed and is expected to make a recommendation to the pope. The timetable remains unclear, but many interested in the topic believe that the can won’t be kicked down the road for too much longer. 

A Chorus of Voices

At 75, Zagano, a research associate and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University on Long Island, remains hopeful. She would like to avoid the fate of Moses, who only lived to see the Promised Land from a distance.  

Casey Stanton, 36, is codirector of Discerning Deacons, a group comprised of women who believe they are called to serve as Catholic deacons. Launched in 2021, Discerning Deacons observes the September 3 Phoebe feast day and has surveyed women working in ministry about their sentiments on being ordained as deacons. 

Stanton, who served in parish ministry at Immaculate Conception Church in Durham, North Carolina, and worked for a decade as a parish organizer for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Campaign for Human Development, is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School. She describes herself as part of a generation of Catholic women who, as girls, were altar servers and grew up in a world where women in leadership roles are a given. 

Women will continue to minister in the Church no matter what, says Stanton, but ordination would serve as a powerful symbol, both for those who would be ordained and for those they serve. 

_{Phyllis Zagano, PhD, a research associate and adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University on Long Island, has been a leading voice in favor of women deacons for decades. She is hopeful her efforts will bear fruit under Pope Francis.}

A study by Discerning Deacons written by Tricia C. Bruce, a University of Notre Dame sociologist, found strong interest in ordination among women in ministry. While some respondents indicated that they would prefer to remain as laypeople, a majority said they were interested in becoming deacons or at least wanted it to be an option. 

Ordination, the study concluded, would provide legitimacy to women who often work on the margins of Church life. Such women, noted the study, cope with “how the lack of title, recognition, and authority conferred through ordination results in ambiguity.” 

Ordination as deacons would allow for women to routinely perform baptisms, witness weddings, and, perhaps of greatest significance, preach at Sunday Mass, granting their ministry a recognition for Catholics in the pews. The pope’s call to hear from everyone as part of the Synod on Synodality is an opportunity, says Stanton. Advocates of ordaining women deacons are presenting their case in pre-synod dialogues across the country and the world. 

Opposition Remains

As the possibility of women being ordained as deacons seems tantalizingly close to many of its advocates, there remains opposition. Some women who have pursued ordination to the priesthood see the diaconate as a token gesture. Others argue that the logic behind forbidding women’s ordination to the priesthood applies to the diaconate as well. 

Missionary Servant of the Most Blessed Trinity Sister Sara Butler, who taught in seminaries in New York and Chicago, says that the decision on ordaining women as deacons will be made relatively soon. But, she says, “I can’t imagine it will be yes.” Sister Sara was among the first two women named by Pope John Paul II to the Vatican’s top theology group. 

While women served as deacons in the ancient Church, says Sister Sara, the prayers for the ordinations were different between men and women. She questions whether they were selected for the same office. The role of women as deacons, Sister Sara says, was to provide ministries for which men were culturally ill-suited. For example, she says, women served the sacramental needs of female monastic communities and assisted widows. 

While ordination advocates point to the substantial record of women in ministry, Sister Sara points to the same phenomenon and asks if ordination would change that reality. 

“There’s nothing in particular that will be added,” she says about ordaining women already serving in ministry to the diaconate. The same basic tasks—teaching, ministering to the poor and the sick, organizing church activities—will be carried out regardless of ordination status. 

“Holy orders is a single sacrament,” says Sister Sara. And, in a point rejected by many feminist theologians, she argues that “sexual complementarity has sacramental significance in Catholic theology”—namely that mirroring Christ sacramentally is a male function; therefore, the clerical state should be reserved for men. 

A Deacon’s Perspective

Deacon Greg Kandra, who ministers in the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, is in regular communication with deacons on TheDeaconsBench.com—a website of commentary on Catholic issues—and as a speaker on pastoral life. 

Deacon Kandra supports ordaining women as deacons. “It would be a tremendous gift to the Church,” he says. “There are a lot of women today who are serving the Church who are not ordained. They have a lot to give.” 

Their impact would be felt. “You will see women at the altar vested. You will see women preaching at Mass. It would move women into pastoral leadership roles, not just behind the scenes,” Deacon Kandra says. 

First, however, he would like to see a greater understanding and acceptance of the role of deacons in the broader Church. “My concern is that the Church needs to get the diaconate right before it brings women into the ministry,” he says. 

After Vatican II, the diaconate experienced a renewal. Of the nearly 50,000 deacons in the world, around half are in the United States, a result of the openness to the restored order by American bishops in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Still, its acceptance is spotty, even though in many parishes Catholics are familiar with the deacon’s role of preaching, witnessing weddings, performing baptisms, and ministering to the poor. Like priests, deacons in the United States are declining in number and are, on average, older than the rest of the adult Catholic population. 

Vatican II, says Deacon Kandra, “left it up to the local bishops and pastors to see how this would work out.” The results have been uneven: Some dioceses offer ongoing formation programs and continue to ordain men. Others don’t. Among the laity, more education about the role of deacons is needed, says Deacon Kandra. Confusion about roles remains. Offering a case in point, he relates how, after a Sunday homily, he was pulled aside by a parishioner who congratulated him on celebrating a superb Mass and referred to the deacon as “monsignor.” 

Deacon William Ditewig, former director of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ office on the diaconate, supports women’s ordination to the diaconate and coauthored a book on the subject with Zagano. 

Like Deacon Kandra, he sees a need to clarify the role of the deacon. Throughout Church history, ordination to the diaconate has been viewed as closely linked to ordination to the priesthood. For centuries, the diaconate has been seen as a stepping stone to the priesthood, a period of mentorship. Today men preparing for ordination to the priesthood are first ordained as “transitional” deacons. This gives them faculties to proclaim the Gospel and to preach at Mass for a year before ordination to the priesthood. 

The tradition of ordaining men seeking priesthood as “transitional” deacons—the apprenticeship model—has contributed to confusion about the role of deacons, Deacon Ditewig said. “The deacon is a vocation in and of itself” and not simply a way station to the priesthood, he says.  

In addition, the issue of women’s ordination as deacons becomes tied into the priesthood, with the Church’s clear prohibition of ordaining women priests mixed into the debate over the diaconate. Both Deacon Ditewig and Zagano insist that the diaconate is a separate vocation. 

Pope Francis, as is his inclination, is willing to let the discussion play out publicly. He has expressed appreciation for the ministry of women in the Church, and the recent flurry of activity around the issue is frequently tied to a meeting he held with religious sisters who inquired about the diaconate. 

Whatever the arguments, pastoral needs, such as those expressed at the 2019 Vatican Synod on the Amazon—which focused on a region where many Catholics are ministered to by few clerics—should be the overriding concern, Deacon Ditewig says. 

“History gives us lessons, but ultimately it becomes a partial lesson,” he says. The fundamental question is: Who does the Church need now? 

Sidebar: Deacons or Deaconesses?

In the world of scholars and activists debating the issue of whether women can be ordained as deacons in the Catholic Church, certain recurring arguments abound. One flash point is language. 

Would women ordained as deacons be referred to simply as deacons or as deaconesses? For Phyllis Zagano, who emphasizes that the diaconate is distinct from the ordained priesthood, the answer is deacon, because that is the title granted to Phoebe in Romans 16:1–3. 

The diaconate as a vocation was part of early Christian communities, she says. The addition of the transitional diaconate as a training ground for future priests is an addendum of later Church history. “(As) the Church teaches that women cannot be ordained as priest or bishops, it also teaches there is a distinct order of the diaconate,” she writes in Women Deacons: Past, Present, and Future (Paulist Press, 2011). 

However, Sister Sara Butler opts for using the word deaconesses. She argues that the Catholic Church has long held a unitary approach to ordination, a role for deacons who can move on to the ordained priesthood. She also points out that the position that women held in the early Church differed from that of men who were ordained as deacons. 

The revived diaconate is only 50 years    old, and its growth has taken place amid an upsurge in women in pastoral roles. According to a study conducted by the National Pastoral Life Center, lay ecclesial ministers working in parishes outnumber active diocesan priests. 

That study estimated that 80 percent of lay ecclesial ministers were women. Whether that work should be recognized by ordination, or remain as a lay ministry, continues to be at the crux of the discussions around the possibility of ordaining women as deacons. 

When their parents brought them to the United States as children, they were too young to have a say in the matter. Now, as adults, they are advocating for the right to remain in the only country they’ve ever known.

Maria Vizcaino speaks like any other 26-year-old college graduate from the Atlanta suburbs. She carries a slight Southern accent, and her relatively fair complexion causes people to be surprised when they discover she is among the estimated 640,000 people who rely on DACA for her life in the United States.

“They expect a stereotypical Mexican,” Maria says.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) remains a mouthful of bureaucratese sometimes hard to follow for the uninitiated. Immigration advocates often use the term “Dreamers” to describe those, like Vizcaino, who came to the United States with their families as children illegally and now seek better lives. Vizcaino came here from Mexico when she was only 4 years old.

To obtain DACA status, immigrants must pay a fee of nearly $500, pass through an application process, meet all eligibility requirements, and have no felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records. They are then eligible for work permits. But DACA does not offer a path to citizenship. Only legislation passed by Congress could do that, and that doesn’t look likely in the current divisive political climate surrounding immigration issues.

Still, DACA offers hope for Dreamers. For Vizcaino, it provides an entry into American life, a pathway to success. “It’s been the biggest relief for me,” she says. Without it, she would be trapped in a nowhere land of no citizenship and no opportunities beyond a lifetime in the immigrant shadows.

Dreaming of Closure

The Dreamers emerged after President Barack Obama implemented DACA by executive action in 2012. That decision came after years of lobbying by immigrant activists. Obama argued that DACA assured participation in American life among those who arrived here as children, like Vizcaino, far too young to be held responsible for violating the law.

Vizcaino is a Dreamer who has taken advantage of the opportunities provided with DACA. A member of St. Philip Benizi Church in Jonesboro, Georgia, she graduated from Kennesaw State University with a degree in political science. She works as a legal assistant and plans to attend graduate school, advancing her own role as a young political activist.

Still, nothing is guaranteed with DACA. Vizcaino, like the other Dreamers, is obliged to avoid run-ins with the police and pay fees every other year to receive a stamp of approval to continue working. The program, while relatively uncontroversial—even President Donald Trump, not known as a champion of immigrants, spoke favorably about the Dreamers—is intractably swept up in the wider political arguments around immigration.

Congress has never approved it, and it hangs by a thread over the lives of its recipients. The directive has been regularly challenged in court, bouncing between rulings that have upheld it and others that threaten its very existence.

“It’s the fear of all of us that the courts could take it all away,” says Vizcaino, who has followed the ups and downs of DACA since emerging as an immigration rights activist during high school. Her fears were partially realized in July 2021, when the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that DACA was unlawful. However, as the case continues to be argued in the courts, current DACA recipients are allowed to continue in the program.

Speaking Out

José Cabrera, former director of education and advocacy for the Ignatian Solidarity Network, a Cleveland-based Jesuit social justice group, speaks frequently about immigration issues and his own former DACA status. Born in Mexico, he came to the United States at age 4 and settled with his family in Cincinnati. His father worked in construction; his mother cleaned houses and, in an inspiration for her son, worked as an immigration rights activist.

A leader in YES—Youth Educating Society—Cabrera has advocated for immigrant rights since his high school days and college years at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He speaks as an impassioned advocate for others, describing how DACA played an essential part in his story.

When Cabrera first came to the United States, his family stayed at an uncle’s home in North Carolina. He learned early about his limited rights in the country because he and his family entered illegally. “You have to understand. You have no rights here. You can’t talk to the police, or else you could be separated from your mother,” his uncle told him.

_{Sandra Oñate, a Dreamer born in Mexico, helps lead a rally in support of immigration reform in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2017.}

DACA allowed him to continue his education. Eventually, Cabrera was able to emerge from the shadows and is now a legal US resident.

He says he felt the support of the community nurtured via his Jesuit education and the immigrant community that grew around the former St. Charles Borromeo Church in Cincinnati. Cabrera says the Church has been a vital source of support and advocacy for Dreamers. Still, while the institutional Church is on board, not all in-the-pew Catholics are as supportive, shown by the approval among some Catholic communities for the anti-immigrant rhetoric of former President Trump.

But for Cabrera, advocating for DACA is a faith imperative. “You should welcome your neighbor; you should welcome your fellow Catholics,” he says. “Welcoming the immigrant is very much a part of the Catholic Church.”

Sandra Oñate, 24, is another DACA Dreamer born in Mexico. She came to the United States with her family at 5, settled in Sharonville, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, and graduated with a degree in biology from Northern Kentucky University.

She became aware of her undocumented status while still in grade school. When her parents left for work, and she stayed at home with her sister, they were told to turn the lights out and to be careful talking to the police.

They found community at the former St. Charles Borromeo Church in Cincinnati with its large Latino presence. Oñate became an activist for DACA young people such as herself while still in high school. “I learned that my story was different. I learned how to tell my story,” she says. Part of that story is that she came to the United States with a degenerative eye condition, which, with the help of surgeries, she is now overcoming.

Every two years, she reapplies for DACA status, filling out the government paperwork, hoping that someday the program will become law.

The Catholic Response

While the country remains divided over DACA, the Catholic Church has adamantly supported its provisions and worked to make the program permanent via congressional action.

Even in a time when the Church itself can seem as divided as the nation at large, no Catholic authority has protested DACA provisions. Support transcends ideological differences among bishops. Pope Francis, who rarely comments on US politics, has shown that the Church stands with immigrants.

The bishops are following his lead. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) argues that DACA should be enshrined into law by congressional action. Meanwhile, Church activists fight legal challenges to a program supported by the relatively flimsy thread of executive directive. President Joe Biden followed Obama in support of DACA and has been joined by Democrats in Congress. But action has stalled in the Senate.

Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville-Rodriguez, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, noted the bishops’ support for DACA in a statement after a federal court ruling in Texas in June 2021. “We know that DACA was never meant to be a permanent solution for Dreamers,” he said. “This ruling is simply the most recent development in a long list of events warranting action by Congress. The Senate currently has multiple bills before it that would grant permanent relief to Dreamers, including the American Dream and Promise Act passed by the House of Representatives in March [2021].”

The bishop noted the contribution of Dreamers to the US economy, their service in the military, and how many were frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. “But they are prevented from becoming full members of our society,” he said. “All Dreamers, not just those receiving DACA, deserve the opportunity to achieve their God-given potential in the only country most of them have ever known. This is not only a matter of human dignity but also family unity, considering the 250,000 US citizen children with Dreamers as parents.”

The bishop quoted Pope Francis: “Immigrants, if they are helped to integrate, are a blessing, a source of enrichment, and new gift that encourages a society to grow.”

_{In 2017, José Cabrera, then a student at Xavier University in Cincinnati, shares his immigration story at the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice in Washington, DC. The annual gathering commemorates the 1989 martyrdom of six Jesuits and their companions in El Salvador.}

Bishop Mark Seitz of the border Diocese of El Paso, Texas, is among those who have been most assertive in support of an immigrant Church that has long been established near the US-Mexico border. He expressed anger after the Trump administration threatened to end DACA: “Christians are fundamentally loving, forgiving people, just as Jesus lived and is, but there are some things that angered Jesus, and they should anger us as well. Some things should anger us enough to have the courage to speak out to people against their politically motivated assaults on the innocents.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco noted: “When immigrants are no longer seen as merely a danger to others or threats to the local community but instead as persons, our feelings of animosity can morph into feelings of love and concern. As Catholics, we are called not only to know the stranger through the stranger’s stories but to welcome the stranger as Christ himself, for Christ reveals himself to us through them: I was . . . a stranger and you welcomed me’ (Mt 25:35).”

Echoing Pope Francis, the San Francisco archbishop argued that “an essential component of our role in welcoming the stranger is to place special attention on integration—uplifting the newcomer to help him or her reach full and dignified participation in our Church and society.”

The stance of the bishops is not surprising. They are acting in the long tradition of a Church built on immigrants in this country throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Back in 1988, the bishops established the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), an advocacy and legal support service program for immigrants. It was a time of relative harmony and bipartisanship around immigration concerns. In 1986, a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, with the support of Democrats in Congress, offered a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. CLINIC, based in Washington, DC, was established to assist immigrants to process the necessary paperwork to prove that they had been long-established residents.

That almost-forgotten amnesty is now ancient history. The comity of bipartisanship around immigration issues is now a relic. Many Republican politicians express regret for Reagan’s amnesty, arguing that it failed to be accompanied by stricter border controls.

Even amid the partisan wrangling, there is hope that a DACA consensus could emerge. DACA recipients now are a central part of American life. While the public imagination focuses on the young, many are approaching middle age and have established careers, businesses, and families.

They are also essential to the country, argues Anna Marie Gallagher, executive director of CLINIC. Dreamers are all over the United States and are an integral part of communities beyond the immigrant hotbeds of large cities on the coasts or in the US-Mexico border region. “They are all American, for all intents and purposes, except for their place of birth,” she says.

Conflicting Viewpoints

Much of the ongoing debate over immigration involves seemingly intractable conflicts. Issues include: Should those who came here illegally be allowed the rights of US citizens? Will a pathway to citizenship applied to all undocumented immigrants only encourage more to crowd the borders? Is granting rights to Dreamers a reward for illegal behavior?

But DACA is different, says Gallagher. No one should argue that children should be punished for the decisions of their parents now that they are adults. Political factions in Congress, she says, should look to enshrine DACA into legislation because “this is something they can and should come together on.”

_{(Left) Outside the US Capitol in 2018, Sisters of Mercy and others participate in the Catholic Day of Action with Dreamers to press Congress to protect DACA recipients. This demonstration of solidarity brought together over 200 priests, women religious, and laypeople, some of whom were arrested for civil disobedience. (Right) Anna Marie Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), speaks during a session of the US bishops’ general assembly in 2021.}

Amy Haer, director of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, says that many of the Dreamers are no longer young: “Some of these people have had this status for nine years. They have built families and careers in the United States.”

She sometimes hears complaints that the Dreamers should come to the United States the way former immigrants did, through a legal portal. But Haer, who traces her own family’s lineage in the United States to the 17th century, notes that the times have changed. “They will say that my people came the right way. But the right way was a lot easier when your people came,” she says, noting the growth of restrictive immigration laws as the gates narrowed in the early 20th century.

Planting a Seed

Sandra Oñate will, along with many other young Dreamers, continue to speak out, arguing the case that massive deportations of those who have been here for decades and did not consciously violate the law are unrealistic, besides violating the Christian principle of welcoming the stranger articulated by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel.

In reality, many of the Dreamers are not strangers. They are, argue immigration advocates and DACA recipients, as American as anyone else. Many don’t speak the language of their home countries and are often culturally disconnected from their countries of origin. They have largely become a part of life in the large urban centers on the coasts, as well as the suburbs of places such as Cincinnati and Atlanta, and small towns across the South and the Midwest.

Successfully describing themselves as Dreamers—conjuring up an image of American achievement—those in the movement are now promoting that picture in the hope that politicians can be persuaded that what is good for the Dreamers is also good for the nation. The struggle is sure to continue.

“At the end of the day,” says Oñate, “my option is to share my experience and to plant a seed.”

Back and Forth: A DACA Time Line

2001: With bipartisan sponsorship from Senators Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act is proposed; it is repeatedly rejected by Congress.

JUNE 2012: President Barack Obama establishes the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

AUGUST 2012: US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), under the Department of Homeland Security, begins accepting DACA applications.

SEPTEMBER 2017: President Donald Trump announces that DACA will be phased out.

JUNE 2020: The Supreme Court rules that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA and sends the case back to Homeland Security; meanwhile, the DACA program remains in place.

JANUARY 2021: President Joe Biden directs the secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the attorney general, to maintain and strengthen DACA.

JULY 2021: A Texas federal judge rules DACA illegal and blocks new applicants. Those currently in the program may keep their status during the appeal.

_{(Sources: Law Library, Howard University; Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, Ross-Blakley Law Library)}

Check out our blog, Helping Dreamers, to learn more.

Father Boniface Ramsey raised red flags about Theodore McCarrick for years before the media and Church leaders took notice. While some call him a hero, he hopes to be remembered first as a good priest.

It’s near the end of Lent 2021, the Church busy season, and Father Boniface Ramsey, 75, bounds around St. Joseph of Yorkville Parish in New York City amid a hectic schedule.

On this warm, early spring day as the city seemingly emerges, slowly and cautiously, from a yearlong pandemic, students at the parish school are playing on the street. The neighborhood, with its tidy Upper East Side brownstones and apartments, looks as if it could be placed on a Hollywood back lot representing old New York.

Father Ramsey has just returned from bedside prayer with a dying parishioner. There will soon be weekday Mass at noon, with a few dozen congregants reflecting on the final days of Jesus’ life and the prophetic Book of Jeremiah.

“I love being a priest,” says Father Ramsey during a lull in the day’s activity. “The sacraments mean everything for me.”

Ordained a Dominican priest in 1973, Father Ramsey was once a seminary professor and scholar with a focus on patristics, early Christian art, and history. Besides German, he is fluent in French. In 2004, he became a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, his hometown. Father Ramsey’s career reflects a record of accomplishment as a scholar and urban pastor. But when the time comes to write his obituary, he realizes that little of that will matter. He is sure to share the first sentence with the scandal-scarred former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. They remain inextricably linked.

For decades, Father Ramsey knew much about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct but found few willing to listen and fewer still willing to do anything about it.

“It would come up on occasion,” Father Ramsey recalls, particularly when McCarrick was up for an ecclesial promotion or was the subject of a laudatory story. “Something would irritate me on all this. I would feel frustrated and not listened to.”

McCarrick’s story has been told in numerous media outlets, as well as in the landmark official Church report on him issued in 2020. Coupled with the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing decades of priest sex abuse, the events disheartened and dismayed Catholics.

The Beach House

But it was nothing new for many in McCarrick’s circle. Father Ramsey knew about the harassment McCarrick directed toward students at Immaculate Conception Seminary in South Orange, New Jersey. From 1987 to 1996, their paths crossed, at a time when McCarrick was archbishop of Newark and Father Ramsey was a professor at the seminary.

It begins with the beach house. McCarrick—their superior, who would ultimately decide their path to ordination—would arrange for seminarians to join him at the Jersey Shore for what was billed as a respite of rest, recreation, and contemplation. The invitees would always exceed the number of beds available, so McCarrick would share a bed with one of the seminarians. It was an open secret among the staff and students at the seminary at the time. He asked his favorites to refer to him as “Uncle Ted.”

That was not all. When Father Ramsey argued against advancing a seminarian personally recruited by McCarrick—a former flight attendant whom the then-
archbishop had befriended on his many travels—he was taken off the committee that made such decisions.

Father Ramsey tried to get the word out about what was happening at the seminary. Few wanted to hear, he says. He spoke to a fellow Dominican, the late Archbishop Thomas Kelly of Louisville, around 1993. Father Ramsey says that Archbishop Kelly indicated that many of his fellow bishops knew of McCarrick’s behavior.

After the funeral of New York Cardinal Edward Egan in 2015, at which McCarrick was an honored guest, Father Ramsey wrote to Cardinal Se√°n O’Malley of Boston, the prelate in charge of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse response. That letter remained unanswered.

Cardinal O’Malley, after the scandal broke, blamed an administrative error that resulted in his not seeing the letter. He later apologized. In a statement posted to the Boston Archdiocese’s website, Cardinal O’Malley wrote, “I apologize to Father Ramsey for not having responded to him in an appropriate way and appreciate the effort that he undertook in seeking to bring his concerns about Archbishop McCarrick’s behavior to my attention.”

_{Father Boniface Ramsey chats with students at his alma mater, St. Joseph School, located in Yorkville, a neighborhood in New York City’s Upper East Side.
Photo: Dennis Livesy}

Frustrated by inaction by Church officials, Father Ramsey tried to attract media attention. In an email to a journalist in 2006, he wrote that McCarrick had a “history of Michael Jackson-like behavior with his seminarians when he was archbishop of Newark.”

Six years earlier, Father Ramsey had written to Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, then papal nuncio, just as McCarrick was being mentioned as a prime candidate to become the new archbishop of Washington, DC. It was a position he eventually secured.

The Quiet Hero

At the time, McCarrick’s behavior was known to be directed solely toward other adult males. Father Ramsey had not heard of any minors being physically abused. But when the Archdiocese of New York in 2018 revealed that McCarrick had been credibly accused of abusing a boy while he was a young priest, Father Ramsey’s suspicions found a wider audience. The priest’s name became linked to stories about McCarrick, and he was credited as a whistleblower, finally getting heard.

“There really wasn’t much courage involved,” says Father Ramsey, noting that his involvement created frustration but little personal risk. At the time, he was a Dominican Order priest, outside the direct purview of McCarrick’s authority.

While the McCarrick revelations created an uproar, some blame those who looked the other way. Father Ramsey is not among them. “They were good people who were horribly flummoxed about this. They just didn’t know what to do about it,” he says.

Those who work in advocacy for victims of sex abuse credit Father Ramsey for his persistence and truth-telling.

“Ramsey is a hero,” says Robert Hoatson, a former Newark seminarian, priest, and student of Father Ramsey’s, who is now a layman and founder of Road to Recovery, an organization that assists sex abuse victims. Father Ramsey, says Hoatson, provided a quiet, often unrecognized witness to the truth.

“I had no indication at the time that he was working in the background to protect the seminarians,” recalls Hoatson. He describes how seminarians at the time were aware of McCarrick’s beach house activities, with an atmo-sphere of fear and secrecy covering up the behavior. While others remained mum, Father Ramsey spoke up, says Hoatson, because “he believed that the priesthood was sacred and holy and should not be tarnished.”

Terry McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, which compiles information on the sex abuse crisis in the Church, says that Father Ramsey played an admirable role in the McCarrick case.

The priest was “an insider willing to take some risks to address the situation that he thought was wrong.” He also acted amid the constraints felt by Church whistleblowers, says McKiernan. Much of what Ramsey described later surfaced in charges raised by former apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan√≤, who in 2018 issued a jeremiad accusing Pope Francis of ignoring McCarrick’s abuse.

McKiernan notes that Father Ramsey was careful to distance himself from the most inflammatory and unproved accusations issued by the former nuncio. In an atmosphere where some have blamed homosexuals for the Church sex abuse crisis, Father Ramsey says he is respectful of the struggles of gay clergy and seminarians and thinks they should not be targeted simply because they are gay.

Donna Doucette, executive director of Voice of the Faithful, formed in response to the sex abuse crisis that emerged in Boston early this century, credited Father Ramsey for persistently working through a system that didn’t want to hear what he had to say. “There were bishops who looked the other way because it would cause them trouble,” she says.

While its effects still linger, the McCarrick sex abuse scandal is no longer front-page news—with Father Ramsey and others grappling with its long-term impact.

_{Father Boniface Ramsey preaches at St. Joseph Parish in Yorkville. Photos: Dennis Livesy}

A Parish Priest

As a result of the scandals, bishops have taken a hit in public credibility, Father Ramsey says. Still, after more than a dozen years at St. Joseph Parish, he realizes that Catholics generally still admire their parish priests, who are the closest to them and whose strengths and human weaknesses are regularly on display. He says there are parishioners who love him and those who don’t, a situation that remains as it has always been.

Still there are other things he would like to be remembered for beyond his ongoing confrontation with McCarrick. Father Ramsey fought unsuccessfully for the restoration of a facade of an old orphanage, formerly run by the parish, now owned by a posh private school. A headline in the New York Times described it as a case of “The Private School v. the Radical Priest.”

The facade was plastered over, but Father Ramsey was able to negotiate a scholarship in memory of the orphans. “I won as good as I could have won under the circumstances,” he says.

Father Ramsey also preached against drug dealers in the parish. One of them responded by sending the priest a threatening letter. He says the open drug scene in the parish has largely faded.

Still he realizes he will not be remembered in the public realm for those struggles, or for his work as a patristic scholar and author of books and articles on the Fathers of the Church. He will remain forever linked to McCarrick, now living in quiet exile, laicized and no longer a cardinal.

Despite the apathy and sometimes outright opposition from Church higher-ups, Father Ramsey says his faith never wavered during his time as a seemingly lone whistleblower. “The story was frustration,” he recalls. “No one seemed to care about what seemed so obvious to me.”

He remains no biblical Jeremiah, castigating the authorities for their failures. Father Ramsey says they all had reasons for acting, and not acting, the way they did. Father Ramsey has navigated the transition from being a Dominican priest, with its strong sense of community and a superior who is elected by and lives with other priests, and that of an archdiocesan priest who, for the most part, lives alone.

He describes himself as enjoying the autonomy. He asked to extend his ministry beyond the usual 75-year-old retirement age, keeps reading regularly, and takes long walks, sometimes as much as 10 miles back and forth to Brooklyn, to dine with priest friends. He remains lanky and slim.

“God gave me a certain ease,” Father Ramsey says, leaning back in his chair in a rectory meeting room. He remains convinced that despite its all-too-human blemishes, the Church “is the bride of Christ. I truly believe that. I love the Church.”

BishopAccountability.org: A ‘Digital Archive’ of the Clergy Abuse Crisis

While the sex abuse scandals surrounding Theodore McCarrick and the Pennsylvania grand jury report have faded from the headlines, one organization works daily to prevent future cover-ups.

BishopAccountability.org describes itself as “a digital and brick-and-mortar archive of the Catholic clergy abuse crisis.” The organization tracks assignment histories of accused clergy and religious, maintains a database of accused, and tracks the lists of accused that the dioceses and religious orders have published.

The organization’s mission is to hold bishops accountable for abuse that occurs under their watch.

“It is a matter of public record that US bishops have knowingly transferred thousands of abusive priests into unsuspecting parishes and dioceses, placing fear of scandal’ ahead of the welfare of children,” according to BishopAccountability.org. “The bishops themselves have apologized for what they call their mistake,’ but they say nothing about the crucial actions that constitute accountability.

“For accountability to occur, two things must happen: 1) There must be a full account’ of the bishops’ responsibility for the sexual abuse crisis, both individually and collectively, and 2) bishops who have caused the abuse of children and vulnerable adults must be held accountable.'”

BishopAccountability.org “makes publicly available more than 63,630 pages of Church files; over 121,000 news articles; a collection of investigative and other reports and studies totaling more than 100,000 pages; and over 1,880 archived copies of lists of accused, created by more than 150 dioceses and more than 25 religious institutes and provinces.”

The website also includes an “abuse tracker” with links to media reports of clergy sex abuse coverage.

Police officers are more likely to die by suicide than be killed by criminals. A retired Catholic Charities executive and others are working to change that.

Brian Cahill has never been a cop, but burnished in his psyche is a troubling slice of data about police officers. No matter how tough the city or how crime-ridden a neighborhood, psychological risks are more likely to bring down a cop than the most hardened criminals, says Cahill, retired executive director of Catholic Charities in San Francisco.

The fact is, more police officers kill themselves than are killed by criminals. In the first 10 months of 2019, 188 police officers across the nation died by suicide. Two years before, 140 police officers killed themselves, while 129 died in the line of duty.

Particular police work and certain cities have been suicide hot spots. In New York City in the first 10 months of 2019, 10 police officers took their lives. Six in a similar time period killed themselves in Chicago. The rate is even higher among corrections and border patrol officers.

_{John Cahill, a father of two, served as a motorcycle officer in San Jose, California, until his death in 2008.}

A Mission Born of Personal Tragedy

Cahill is a veteran of social service leadership, but he comes to the issue with more than a professional stake. In 2008, just days after his retirement party, he got word that his son, John, a San Jose, California, police officer, 42 years old and the father of two, killed himself.

“I’m just the father of a cop who lost his way,” says Cahill. Like many other family survivors, he has taken it upon himself to make something good come out of personal tragedy. He has studied the issue and spends time in police departments around California and the country, warning police officers and their supervisors to be wary of signs of despair among fellow cops.

“You guys have to train for the hidden risks,” Cahill, a frequent suicide-prevention lecturer for police audiences, often tells them.

For the past eight years, he has tried to shed light upon those risks by making suicide prevention among cops a mission. Cahill speaks regularly to officers in San Francisco and San Jose, and he wrote a book in 2018 about his son’s death, titled Cops, Cons, and Grace: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Suicide. His work with Catholic Charities gave him the background and skills to immerse himself in a sensitive issue. “I do think that as a social worker all my life, once I started to climb out of my initial grief and pain, it was a logical and natural inclination to look to how I could help other cops and their families avoid what happened to my son,” he says.

San Francisco police are required to take 40 hours of ongoing education every two years. Cahill gets a half hour of that time to spread his message of the need for self-healing as well as signs to watch out for among colleagues. His theory, and that of others in the field, is that just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an involved community to watch out for the mental health of police officers. The model of the lone cop fighting through personal demons doesn’t work.

Theories abound as to why police officers are vulnerable to suicide. Some point to their access to guns; however, others note that often the method of killing does not involve a firearm. Cahill sees the psychology of a police officer as a major factor.

“They are used to bringing control out of chaos, ” he says, noting that they are often the first on the scene of a crime or a tragic accident. When that ability to control personal problems—such as drinking, money problems, or a marriage conflict—begins to slip, cops become vulnerable.

Another factor is the taciturn culture of police departments, especially suspicion that those outside the blue wall cannot fully comprehend the strains of the work.

Police are often reluctant to ask for help, says Cahill, noting that there is a credo among many officers that doing so is a sign of weakness. In some departments, admitting to mental illness or addiction can mean squandering a chance for promotion or being assigned to restricted duties.

But police departments across the country are beginning to change, trying to encourage officers to seek help when needed.

One such department is San Francisco, where Art Howard has risen to the rank of sergeant over an 18-year career. He is now part of the department’s employee assistance program.

“Suicide is killing more cops than bad guys [are],” he says, talking to a reporter on a rare day off. He echoes Cahill, whom he has worked with on employee assistance programs, when it comes to analyzing the whys of police suicide. “In law enforcement, we take control of situations,” he says. “That’s part of our job. When we feel out of control, we feel depressed.”

A common issue among police officers is alcoholism, often aggravated by post-traumatic stress disorder, much like veterans who have been through war. In the jargon of therapy, too many stressed police officers are self-medicating via drinking and other drugs.

A Lifetime’s Trauma in One Day

Experts on police mental health note that the nature of the job creates special challenges. For most people, a violent event may happen once or twice in their lives. For many veteran officers, simply going to work may result in an encounter that could prove traumatic.

A study by the Ruderman Family Foundation noted that a typical police officer encounters 188 critical incidents in a career, traumatic events such as the beating of a child, a deadly car accident, or seeing a corpse.

The nature of police work is not normal, says Howard. Exposure to violence and accidents, sometimes resulting in death, is part of a police officer’s work. “That could be a Monday for us,” he says, noting cops’ repeated exposure to trauma can create adrenaline rushes that are hard to get down from.

Howard notes that some military veterans working for the San Francisco Police Department who have experienced combat and who have served as officers tell him that the pressure is often more intense in police work, that the exposure to trauma is even more intense.

What develops, says Howard, is a “hypervigilant stance that officers get into by being on guard all the time.”

The go-it-alone attitude is beginning to crack as departments across the country promote mental health initiatives. One of his goals, says Howard, is to encourage officers to look out for themselves as well as their fellow officers. The goal is to encourage them to seek therapy, to promote a culture that can overcome the stigma attached to seeking help. The department trains 300 officers in peer support, helping them learn to identify warning signs. “Everything we’re doing is suicide prevention,” says Howard.

That approach is now more common across the country.

Chicago police officer Cindy Phillips began a program she calls STAR (Suicide Trauma and Recovery), intended to bring police officers together to talk out personal issues. It’s a program she would like to extend around the country.

Phillips, a 19-year police veteran, began STAR after her 17-year-old daughter Emily killed herself. Emerging from her own grief, she wanted to help others. The issue of suicide among her police colleagues was obvious to her.

The goal of STAR is to get officers to talk about issues without fear of stigma.

“Police officers will tend to open up to other police officers,” she says. STAR brings together cops to share personal and emotional concerns.

The group sessions are not intended as professional therapy. “But at least if you are talking, you are getting a foot in the door,” says Phillips. The idea is to present a friendly community for troubled officers, who can still perceive even the most well-intentioned official channels as obstacles.

Phillips believes that talking about her own struggle can help others. Her work is geared not only to police officers but also to the families, like hers, that have suffered the trauma of suicide.

“Every single person I meet, I will tell them Emily’s story. It opens up a taboo subject,” she says.

_{(From left) Chaplain Bob Montelongo, a deacon and a cop, stands with Officer Jason Font and Father Dan Brandt outside Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.}

Cop-Chaplain: ‘One Is Too Many’

Robert Montelongo, another Chicago police officer, supports Phillips’ efforts. Suicide prevention is a team effort that has to involve everyone, including cops who are not personally affected but can see the issue emerging in the lives of their fellow officers, he says.

Montelongo, 22 years a cop, is also a deacon for the Archdiocese of Chicago and now serves as a police chaplain. Because of the size of the department, he has seen a number of suicides among fellow officers.

“One is just too many,” says Montelongo, noting that he is sometimes one of the first on the scene and is expected to offer consolation to both fellow cops and families. He has knelt over and blessed the bodies of suicide cop victims.

Why are cops vulnerable? He points to the nature of the job. Every day, cops deal with the worst days that others experience. It can be wearing.

“You see the horrible things that happen in the world,” he says. Police are on the front lines of social disorder, especially in a city like Chicago, which has one of the nation’s highest murder rates.

Montelongo wears three uniforms on the job: civilian office attire, a police uniform, and the clericals of a deacon. These roles have much in common, says Montelongo, who compares being a police officer to a religious calling. “We are called to a vocation to go out and help others, to put it on your shoulders. It’s the call of a police officer.”

In many ways, his work with survivors of cop suicide is a ministry of presence. There are no preplanned magic words. When responding to such a call, Montelongo will pull over and say a prayer that he can bring the healing of the Holy Spirit to the scene, whether on the job or at the police officer’s home.

For Catholics, religious concerns often emerge when dealing with the suicide of a fellow officer or family member.

Some Catholic police families find little solace in their religion, which once condemned the act of suicide as contrary to God’s law. But in more recent times pastoral leaders emphasize that no one in this world can judge the culpability of a suffering victim. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide” (2282).

Montelongo communicates to grieving families and friends that their loved one suffered from an illness, like those who die from cancer. It is a battle that could not be overcome, much like a physical illness.

Prevention is accomplished through supportive environments for all.

“The greatest thing we can do is to get people to talk to us,” he says. Montelongo spent many years on the street, including a stint on bicycle patrol. It helps his credibility to have a vocation as both a Catholic cleric and a police officer.

“I’ve done what they’ve done. It means a lot. They’ll use police lingo that I will understand,” he says, something a civilian would have trouble comprehending.

For example, cops at the scene of great tragedies often maintain a cool demeanor, appearing to the outsider as oblivious to the carnage that surrounds them. They may use language that can seem insensitive, for example, referring to a corpse as a “stiff.” But Montelongo knows it is part of the job, a way to rise above exposure to horror.

The civilian world can help by providing emotional and spiritual support for cops, he says. At St. Gabriel Church in the Canaryville neighborhood of Chicago, parishioners regularly pray the rosary for police officers. It is a quiet act, but appreciated.

“We need to have that,” says Montelongo, who notes that officers feel the sting of volatile opposition to the police, which has at times been a part of life in Chicago and other major cities.

In many police departments, there is a long tradition of Catholic involvement.

For survivors, faith in a loving God is one way to move toward acceptance of a tragedy and healing, says Phillips, a member of St. Barbara Parish in Chicago. “I can’t change it, ” she says of her experience with her daughter. “I give it to God and let him take care of it.”

For Cahill, urging police officers to seek help is one way he works through the issues surrounding his son’s death. He also receives spiritual direction from an 85-year-old Jesuit priest, whom he respects for his wisdom and counsel. In his book, he describes hearing his son’s voice on occasion.

He quotes the spiritual writer Father Ron Rolheiser that God’s love, unlike ours, can go through locked doors, a thought that offers him solace.