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2019 Annual Report – International Relations

Jun 22, 2020 | Annual Reports, National

Anne-Marie Gorman
National President and Chairperson of International Relations

In 2019, there were occasions to be directly involved with both Catholic organizations and faith groups outside the Catholic tradition.

A report was prepared from input of all national table officers upon the request of World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) Vice President General Maribeth Stewart Blogodowski. WUCWO was seeking information on how organizations were addressing the four resolutions adopted at the 2018 conference in Dakar, Senegal in October:

  1. A Healthy Planet Depends on All of Us
  2. Let Us Take Care of the Family in Difficult Situations, Especially its Most Vulnerable Members
  3. Let Us Eliminate Discrimination and Violence Against Women
  4. Let Us Educate to Respond to the Call to Holiness

In June, I participated in an intense one-day session at Bon Secours Retreat and Conference Center, Marriottsville, Maryland. Thirty men and women (including young adults), from many religions across the continent, met for the North American consultation for Religions for Peace. The goal was to study five academic papers and make combined responses to be shared at its world assembly in Lindau, Germany in August. The five papers considered were:

  1. Advancing Shared Well-Being by Promoting Integral Human Development (Jeffrey Sachs)
  2. Advancing Shared Well-Being by Promoting Just and Harmonious Societies (Dr. Katherine Marshall)
  3. Advancing Shared Well-Being by Protecting the Earth (Gay Gardner)
  4. Caring for Our Common Future: Advancing Shared Well-Being by Preventing and Transforming Violent Conflicts (Dr. Mark Owen)
  5. Positive Peace as Shared Well-Being (Dr. William F. Vendley)

National President-Elect Fran Lucas and I attended the 99th annual convention of the National Conference of Catholic Women (NCCW) in Atlanta, Georgia, leaving directly after the national post-convention meeting August 22nd and returning August 24th. Presiding was NCCW National President Maribeth Stewart Blogodowski. I brought greetings to the conference on behalf of the 75,000 members of the League. Presentations by the three commissions, composed of women from across the United States of America—service, leadership and spiritual—each one hour in length, provided updates on what the council focussed on for one year. The environment was a significant focus, as well as nurturing local councils. An evening screening of the film, Pray: The Story of Patrick Peyton, was enjoyed by many registrants. The total registration for the conference was 559, which included 402 voting delegates.