On Saturday, March 16, Fordham University’s Campus Ministry hosted the first Catholic Women Speak Symposium, an event inspired by the Global Synod with the goal of uplifting women and creating intentional spaces for conversation and discernment of the role of women within the Catholic Church. The symposium was spearheaded by three Fordham students, Anna Marie Pacione, FCRH ’26, Mollie Clark, FCRH ’26, and Lauryn Sweeney, FCRH ’25, and Carol Gibney, director of the Office of Campus Ministry Solidarity and Leadership.
Reflecting on why she organized the first-ever Catholic Women Speak Symposium, Clark said, “This event was born out of a dream to bring the more synodal Church we’re striving towards to life. As women in the Church, we’ve experienced the all-encompassing love and affirmation from our God, as well as moments of marginalization by those within the institution of the Church. As we have been empowered by one another, countless wonderful women in our lives and Jesus’ own embrace of women in the Gospels, we wanted to empower other women in the same way. We wanted to remind our sisters in Christ that our voices are meant to be heard, and our stories are worth telling.”
Sweeney added, “I am here because of the women of faith in my own life who have shown me the meaning of accompaniment. I am here because of my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who passed on this beautiful and challenging faith to my sister and I more so through their actions than words.”
During the day, there were two keynote presentations by Christine Firer Hinze, chair of Fordham’s theology department, and Julia Osęka, a junior at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and one of 10 non-bishop voting delegates from North America to the Synod in Rome. Hinze discussed the “roses” of the Catholic tradition and highlighted both the ways the Church is living up to her mission and the ways she is falling short. Osęka shared her experiences as a young person listening and voting at the Synod and spoke about ecclesiastical imposter syndrome and frustration. There were also four breakout sessions, from which participants could choose two to attend. The first two were hosted by Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, who is an independent journalist and author of “A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura,” and Sister Mary Catherine, FCRH ’85, who has been a vowed member of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the past 35 years. The hosts for the next two breakout sessions were Vicki Gruta, FCRH ’14, who explored what it means to hold onto your faith after college, and Trena Yonkers-Talz, director of the Community Center, Outreach and Accompaniment at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Bronx who is currently pursuing a doctorate degree in ministry at Fordham.
These talks were coupled with prayers, poems — including one written by Clark entitled “We are Holy in Our Time” — and artwork, as the organizers provided each participant with a luminary offering to decorate with the names of important women in their lives. Attendees sat at round tables for the entirety of the day that were meant to facilitate conversation and emphasize the equality of participants.
These round tables were especially important for the Conversations in the Spirit section of the symposium, where participants engaged in small group discussions structured in a special way to facilitate listening and discernment. In this style of conversation, each person in the group gets the same amount of time to share, and after one person speaks, all other group members state a word or phrase that stood out to them from the speaker’s reflection. At the end of the process, participants discuss convergences, divergences and recommendations directed toward the question being asked. This style of conversation is what the participants in the Global Synod use to guide their discerning process as they prayerfully consider the future of the Church. In groups of four or five with one facilitator, attendees of Catholic Women Speak reflected on the following two questions to guide their conversations in the spirit: (1) Where have I seen or experienced successes — and distresses — within the Church’s structures/organization/leadership/life that encourage or hinder the mission? and (2) How can the structures and organization of the Church help all the baptized to respond to the call to proclaim the Gospel and to live as a community of love and mercy in Christ?
Conversations in the Spirit were followed by Mass in the University Church, where women were uplifted in their roles in each element of the service, serving as hospitality and eucharistic ministers, lectors, altar servers, singers and preachers. Vanessa Rotundo, deputy chief of staff in the President’s Office and the professor of the fall 2023 “Church on the GO” course that traveled to Rome to experience the Synod, reflected on the Gospel passage and spoke of the important role her grandmother played in her personal journey of faith.
Pacione captured the spirit of the Symposium, saying, “Today we are here to celebrate being a woman in this Church and reckon with the difficulties and joys. I don’t have words for the way that each of our gifts bring color, light, dancing, reconciliation, and healing into our world, and I am confident that the Holy Spirit is pouring through each and every one of us and our stories. I hope that our hearts and minds may be open to all of the wisdom our presenters are gifting us today.”
Although this was the first Catholic Women Speak Symposium, the organizers hope that it is not the last. They intend to make the event an annual celebration.
