Maryknoll Lay Missioners to co-sponsor Pax Christi USA virtual national conference Sept. 6-7

Among the speakers at the event will be Ruben Garcia, Pax Christi USA’s 2012 Teacher of Peace and executive director of Annunciation House in El Paso, who will speak about the church’s role in addressing immigration. Sister Deirdre Griffin, SSJ, a Maryknoll lay missioner, works as an immigration attorney at the Annunciation House shelters at the U.S.-Mexico border.

As we witness unprecedented divisions in our world and even our own Catholic family, this Pax Christi USA gathering on Zoom will examine the root causes of the growing polarization with speakers who are actively working in the fields of church politics, nonviolence, and religious nationalism. The aim of the conference is to explore ways in which we can be prophetic — working together in dialogue for a better understanding and offering nonviolent solutions that can give all of us hope.

Speakers at the event will include:

• Pax Christi USA’s Executive Director Charlene Howard and Jack Jezreel, founder and executive director of JustFaith, for a moderated conversation on what it means to be Catholic and prophetic in the United States today.
• Ruben Garcia, Pax Christi USA’s 2012 Teacher of Peace and executive director of Annunciation House in El Paso, who will speak about the church’s role in addressing immigration. Sister Deirdre Griffin, SSJ, a Maryknoll lay missioner, works as an immigration attorney at the Annunciation House shelters at the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Dr. Cynthia Bailey Manns, director of faith formation at St. Joan of Arc (Minneapolis) and one of four lay persons from the United States participating in the Synod on Synodality, who will speak to the impact of the synod in the United States.
• Jordan Denari Duffner, PhD., theologian and scholar of Muslim-Christian relations and interfaith dialogue, who will speak on the role of the church in addressing the ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine.

Pax Christi USA is a community of tens of thousands of lay women and men, women religious, priests, deacons, brothers, bishops, Catholics of all stripes, and persons affiliated with other faith traditions who strive to be the “peace of Christ, Pax Christi” in the world today. It is a network of individual members and over 250 local communities — local groups, high school chapters, college chapters, religious communities, parishes, Catholic Worker communities, and others — across the United States.

In 2022, Maryknoll Lay Missioners adopted nonviolence as a guiding focus to how it approaches mission in the 21st century.

For more information on the conference and to register, visit Pax Christi USA virtual national conference.

ABOUT MARYKNOLL LAY MISSIONERS

Maryknoll Lay Missioners is a Catholic mission-sending community committed to nonviolence through the prevention, intervention, reconciliation and restoration of all creation. We are long-term missioners and missioner families in nine African, Asian and American countries. Striving to create an inclusive and anti-racist world, we live with those most excluded in society to transform unjust structures together. Learn more at mklm.org.