Sister Kathy Brazda to become president of LCWR

Sister of St. Joseph Kathy Brazda has added another leadership role to her agenda.

Sister Kathy, who started her second five-year term as president of the Congregation of St. Joseph last year, was named president-elect of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in June to fill a vacancy. She will become president of the LCWR Aug. 16.

Both positions are parts of collaborative leadership structures, Sister Kathy explained.

The Congregation of St. Joseph has a leadership team of five sisters, who all work together and with their sisters in the community. While one has to be president for canonical reasons, none is more important than any of the others.

“We really talk about this model as participatory leadership,” Sister Kathy said.

The LCWR has a three-person leadership structure, with the past president, the president and the president-elect working together. Each leader normally serves one year in each role, although Sister Kathy will have only about seven weeks instead of a year as president-elect.

Still, she said, she is very confident that she will be ready to assume the role of president after having served on the LCWR board.

She’s also confident that she will have the time and energy to do both jobs, with the collaboration of the other leaders.

That confidence came from her experience of discernment, when the image of a “dazzling God” came to her.

“‘Dazzling’ is not a word I use all the time,” Sister Kathy said. “But that’s what the world needs now, dazzling love. The dazzling love of God.”

The LCWR, an association of the leaders of women’s religious communities in the U.S., was formed in 1956 and now has 1,270 members who represent about 66% of the vowed women religious in the nation.

Its purpose is to promote a developing understanding and living of religious life by: assisting members personally and communally to carry out more collaboratively their service of leadership in order to accomplish further the mission of Christ in today’s world; fostering dialogue and collaboration among religious congregations within the church and in the larger society; and developing models for initiating and strengthening relationships with groups concerned with the needs of society, thereby maximizing the potential of the conference for effecting change.

“We are there at the service of the leadership of women religious and at the service of the church as an organization,” Sister Kathy said. “At this time in religious life, it’s changing. We’re looking to help religious life emerge into what it will be in the future.”

As the numbers of vowed religious decline, Sister Kathy sees members finding ways to live their vocation in the world, using their lives to demonstrate the love of Christ to those they serve.

“There is always the call of religious to be prophetic, and I say that with humility,” Sister Kathy said. “As we get smaller, we are going to be immersing ourselves more in the basic call of religious life, living in service to God’s people in our vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. What does this presence and this way of life say to the world?

“Right now, as communities get older, we are a powerhouse of prayer. We want to lift up that witness. I think that also, because of the positions that we’ve held that give us a certain wisdom and experience, I think our younger sisters are really interested in living that life in service to the people, to the church and to the world.”

She also expects to see increasing cooperation and collaboration among religious communities, something she saw in her work as the founding executive director of Taller de José, a ministry of accompaniment in Chicago that has had sisters from several communities working with young adults.

“The basic charism is the Gospel, and the different community charisms have different lenses,” Sister Kathy said. “As we unite, our voice is stronger and our ability to minister is broader.”

The mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph is unity, she noted. The sisters work to bring people together with one another, with God and with creation, she said, so “anything I can do to build bridges between people is important.”

Sister Kathy said all of her ministry experiences, from teaching and working in small parishes and schools in Chicago to helping found and develop Taller de José to directing the archdiocese’s accompaniment efforts during the restructuring phase of the Renew My Church initiative, have led to her to where she is now.

“I feel prepared. I don’t feel overconfident,” Sister Kathy said, noting that it was her experience of prayer while discerning that gave her the confidence to accept the position. “It was really calling on me just to trust in God, in a dazzling God, to get me through this.”