 So, we are so happy. We are truly privileged to have Carrie Alice Robinson here today to deliver our annual Common Wheel lecture, the 15th in a series that links us in partnership with Common Wheel, the best-written and best-edited Catholic Journal of Opinion in the known world. That's a fact. Carrie is probably best known to most people, maybe not to you young people here, but the people online certainly, best known to most people as the founding executive director of the Leadership Roundtable, which is an organization that's devoted to promoting excellence and best practices in the management, finances, and human resource development of the Catholic Church by harnessing the expertise of senior-level lay executives, bringing professional assistance to the sometimes clunky workings of the Church. Those with a slightly longer memory might associate her with the St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University, whose splendid facility, if you young people haven't seen it, go take a look, your mouths will water, whose splendid facility is in large part due to her skill at fundraising. Carrie served as its director of development and led a successful $75 million fundraising drive to expand and endow the chapel's intellectual and spiritual ministry. There's a lot more I could tell you, and there's no reason why I should go on for half an hour. You want to hear her, not me, so I'm going to abbreviate the rest of it. I could tell you a lot more about her achievements in service to the Church, especially to lay women in the Church. This time short, just very briefly, she currently serves on the boards of St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University, on the board of the Hartford Bishops Foundation, on the board of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, on the International Business Leadership Advisory Council, an initiative of the Secretariat for the Economy in Rome, the International Catholic Migration Commission, and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. As I said earlier, she's prize-winning author of the book Imagining Abundance, Fundraising Philanthropy and a Spiritual Call to Service, and the founding editor of what to many of us would be a very dull book, and to many people is absolutely priceless, the Catholic Funding Guide, a Directory of Resources for Catholic Activities, first published in 1998, now in its eighth edition, maybe ninth by now. Kerry is a frequent writer and speaker on the subjects of philanthropy, development and faith. She's a columnist for Chicago Catholic and has a blog on spirituality called Love in Ordinary Time. She holds a BA degree from Georgetown, a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School, focused in Ethics. She has honorary doctorates from a number of schools, not including Fairfield, so there's a gap there. The President is listening carefully over there. Doctorates from Arvortus Magnus, Aquinas Institute of Theology in Missouri, St. Anselm's in New Hampshire, Mizzerecordia University somewhere in Pennsylvania, St. Joseph's in Connecticut, and the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University in California. Please join me in welcoming Kerry Robinson to offer the fifteenth annual Common Wheel Lecture. Thank you so much. Thank you Paul, my friends at Fairfield University and my friends at Common Wheel. Thank you so much for the honor of being the fifteenth lecturer in this prestigious moment, and to all of you who are in the audience, particularly the students, I am so happy to be in your presence, physically in your presence. Father Geno Walsh famously said, followers of Jesus Christ are promised two things. Your life will have meaning and you will live forever. If you get a better offer, take it. Eternal life, death, and dying have been on my mind a lot since Father Bob Beloyne, the Catholic chaplain at Yale, and my closest friend died. We had worked together for ten years, nearly twenty-five years ago, to expand Catholic life at Yale. That experience of working together allowed us to model a genuine partnership of lay clergy collaboration in a monumental task of consequence for the Church, for Catholic campus ministry, and for future generations of young adults. Eternal life, death, and dying have also been on my mind and heart, as this month we marked two years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, resulting in more than six million deaths worldwide. And today is day thirty-five of the heartbreaking war in Ukraine. We are perhaps to be forgiven for having death on our minds. In the context of confronting my friend's death and all that death means for the Christian believer, I recalled this story. One evening, as relatives and friends gathered in familiar pose and conversation on our porch, not far from here in New Haven, Connecticut, the subject turned rather suddenly to the best way to die. The question was specific in its intensity. How would you like to experience your own death? Over bottles of wine and candlelight, we took turns articulating the pros and cons of the myriad ways any one of us might experience our own death. It was not entirely morbid. One friend was certain that dying in her sleep peacefully at the end of a long life would be the most desirable. Another suggested that she would like to die suddenly and quickly, without warning, ideally after a spectacularly joyful celebration with everyone she knew and loved. Alright, I confess that was me. Another suggested that he would prefer to have as much time as possible with the knowledge of a terminal illness in order to make amends, to thank his friends and family, and to be intentional about giving away everything he possessed. And so the conversation ensued until the oldest at the table, my father, turned to the youngest at the table, our then 13-year-old daughter. Sophie, you have been very quiet and very attentive, but you have not yet volunteered an answer. Do you have an opinion on the way you would most like to die? Everything became still and silent. I held my breath. Too late, I wondered if she was too young for such deep existential distressing discourse. Perhaps she had never seriously considered the matter. Now at the center of everyone's attention, aware that a response was being asked of her, she replied very simply, Yes, I hope I die saving someone else's life. None of these answers were bad answers, but only one was truly Christ-like, the child's. We cannot afford to lose this generation of Catholics, not under any circumstances. We cannot allow the church's prophetic role in the public square and across the globe to be eroded. Both are serious and urgent concerns. At the end of February 2020, days before we went into lockdown for the pandemic, Leadership Roundtable hosted our annual summit entitled From Crisis to Co-responsibility, Creating a New Culture of Leadership. This new culture of leadership is predicated on baptismal responsibility, on co-responsibility, and on leadership as Christ-like service. A major focus and highlight for us was a panel of five young adults. They offered concrete practical suggestions and laid out a vision for the church where every pastoral council, every diocesan finance council, and every board of trustees, from Fairfield University to a local Catholic soup kitchen in Bridgeport, includes a minimum of two young adults who have been prepared, formed, oriented to ecclesiology, Catholic social teaching, and baptismal rights and responsibilities. For decades, leaders of the church in the U.S. have observed that many young adults enjoy a positive experience of the church while they are at college either because they attend a wonderful Catholic university such as this one, or because they attend a secular university that has a vibrant Catholic campus ministry. Catholic students note the exceptional liturgies, relevant homilies, student participation, opportunities for service, immersion in Catholic social teaching in action, and attention to helping them develop a mature adult faith. This is the best educated generation of Catholics the United States has ever had, and as soon as they, you, leave campus, their participation in the church plummets. For decades, leaders have observed and lamented this. The conclusion has always been the same. We know that many young adults will drift away from the church for a period of time, particularly following commencement. They graduate and move to a new city to start their first job, and their neighborhood parish has very few single young adults. We know that the church risks losing them for a time, but they will come back when they get married, have a child, or experience a personal crisis. I've heard this all of my life. This is not a good strategic plan. Jeff Boise, the founder of Leadership Roundtable, Father Bob Beloyne and I said about finding a solution. Our first observation was that the prediction was no longer true if it ever had been. Catholics were not coming back to the church necessarily. For one thing, they were not necessarily getting married, marrying other Catholics or raising their children Catholic. The church didn't always make them or the person they love feel welcome or make it easy or even possible for them to marry in the church. To address the exodus of young adults, we convened leaders, including young adults themselves, to create a leadership formation program called esteem. We've developed a curriculum, a crash course in basic ecclesiology and Catholic social teaching. Each student is paired with a mentor, a local leader whose field of expertise most closely aligns with their professional aspirations. Mentors are on hand for vocational discernment, informal discussion on the role of faith in professional life, and discussions about applying one's faith to leadership. The most significant aim of esteem, however, is to equip the student participants for meaningful leadership experience after graduation by being appointed to a parish council, a diocesan finance council, or the board of trustees of a Catholic nonprofit. If young adults see other young adults in meaningful positions of leadership, they know that their voice and perspective matter. Young adults serving on boards will learn from older, more experienced trustees, offer their own perspective on ways to strengthen mission and attract a new generation. Everyone wins. Those of you who are faculty and staff, campus ministers, Jesuits, and donors to Fairfield University, leaders and educators, thank you for the work on behalf of young adults, our best educated, most promising generation. Your attentiveness to them and to their cognitive and affective formation provides an incalculable service, not only to the church, but to the world. We don't say thank you enough, thank you. My gratitude to you is deep and sincere. In fact, if you ask any person of faith why they are believers, they will invariably point to the example of someone who deeply inspired them, encouraged them, taught them, or cared for them at a formative point in their life. Who is it in your own life who played that role for you, or who plays that role for you? Let us bless them and thank God for them. We are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic in the midst of other pandemics, of racial injustice, of growing inequity and disparity, of environmental degradation, of divisiveness and acrimony, of precarious mental health, of gun violence in the United States, and a barbaric war in Ukraine. What will life be like when we emerge from these challenges? A vision for a way forward is laid out by Pope Francis in Let Us Dream. The path to a better future. Pope Francis writes, quote, Now more than ever, what is revealed is the fallacy of making individualism the organizing principle of society. What will be our new principle? We need a movement of people who know we need each other, who have a sense of responsibility to others and to the world. We need to proclaim that being kind, having faith, and working for the common good are great life goals that need courage and vigor, while GLIB's superficiality and the mockery of ethics have done us no good. The modern era which has developed equality and liberty with such determination now needs to focus on fraternity, with the same drive and tenacity to confront the challenges ahead. Fraternity will enable freedom and equality to take its rightful place in the symphony, end quote. We, all of us gathered today, we can be, must be part of this movement. I have spent a lifetime thinking about stewardship. One definition of stewardship is the proper care of all that has been entrusted to one, but for the Christian it is also the recognition and proper care of the potential at hand. The church is always at the vanguard of human suffering, at home and throughout the world. At the start of the pandemic, many lamented that our churches were empty. But the church was not empty, it had been deployed. The church, our church, is on the front lines of providing education, health care, food, safe shelter, financial support, medicine, supplies, and pastoral care at the local level across the nation and in every part of the globe. The church is on the front lines of providing advocacy and support for people in prison, refugee and immigrant families, people without homes, people newly or chronically unemployed, elderly persons in isolation, persons who are disabled, persons who are trafficked or vulnerable to domestic abuse, and teenagers who can't go home. The only true common denominator for those our church is serving is that they belong to the human family and they are in need. As the famous saying goes, we don't care for people because they are Catholic, we care for people because we are Catholic. The church is playing and will continue to play a vitally important role in rebuilding. And for that reason and so many others, it is incumbent on us to ensure the church is effective at its mission, has the resources to carry out its mission, is trustworthy and well managed. These are not easy days to be Catholic, and these have not been easy years to be Catholic as we confront the twin crises of abuse and fractured trust in church leadership. I won't mince words. The abuse crisis and concomitant distrust of leadership have eroded the moral authority of the church in the public square, affected the ability of the church to evangelize, lessened the credibility of church leadership in the eyes of too many, certainly not helped stem young Catholics from leaving our faith and placed the church's financial well-being at risk. Responding to the abuse crisis and advocating for the role of lay leadership and frankly especially women in the church has been a central component of my work on behalf of the church all of my adult life from the age of 14. I was in my 20s newly elected to the board of trustees of the Raskab Foundation for Catholic activities when in 1997 an archdiocese appealed to the Raskab Foundation for a grant of $500,000 to settle lawsuits stemming from clergy sexual abuse and provide compensation to victim survivors. Now depending on your viewpoint then or now I was either naive or prescient. I wanted to deny the grant and help the archbishop sell property to make recompense to the victims and to be fully transparent about what had happened. Jump forward to 2002. I was working as the director of development at St. Thomas Moore Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale with Father Bob Beloyne. Proudly we were traveling the country meeting with prominent Yale Catholic alumni talking about how we were elevating and celebrating Catholic intellectual discourse on Yale's campus. Taking the topics of the day, illuminating them from the perspective of faith and inviting students into rich dialogue and discourse about the role and relevance of faith. Suddenly the topic of the day was our own church's sexual abuse crisis. Our predominantly lay board at the time did not want us to be distracted by the crisis. Their position was Father Bob and I had not created the crisis, weren't culpable, it had nothing to do with us and we should simply continue to raise money for Catholic life at Yale. Father Bob and I thought that was fundamentally unfaithful. The way we saw it was that the church was our faith family and when your family is in crisis you do everything possible to affect healing and reconciliation. We had a moral responsibility to be part of the solution and to respond to students' questions and distress. Put another way to do nothing is to be complicit. Resolute in our conviction, we planned and hosted a three-day conference entitled Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church. 500 people attended. There were 30 nationally recognized speakers. The material was wrenching but everyone left hopeful. Resolute that this was our church and we were not abandoning it but staying and calling it to greater levels of accountability, transparency, justice, and holiness. We published the proceedings of the conference which became the touchstone for the reform movement and put St. Thomas More at Yale on the map. In 2005, Jeff Boise founded Leadership Roundtable and recruited me to be the founding executive director. We are a network of Catholic leaders from all walks of life with managerial expertise, financial acumen, and problem-solving capability. We harness this collective expertise to help church leaders respond to temporal challenges. We do not wait into doctrinal matters but we are laser focused on helping church leaders properly care for people, facilities, and finances. We help bishops, provincials, and other church leaders solve complex temporal challenges. This means we are faithful to magisterial teaching, cognizant of ecclesiology, and everything we create and offer the church is vetted through the lens of canon law. We are intentionally positive and laudatory. We are partners with church leaders, not antagonists. With uncommon fidelity to purpose and a little patience in grace, we earned the trust and confidence of church leaders, particularly the bishops in the U.S. And then in 2018, suddenly the church was embroiled in a new wave of crisis, one that is not unique to the U.S. but global in nature. Following the McCarrick revelations in the Pennsylvania grand jury report, a new wave of scandal and mounting outrage and impatience was evident here at home. We are not giving up but working diligently to respond and to be part of the solution. At Leadership Roundtable, we advocate that victim survivors be part of all deliberations, solutions, and plans and remain at the center of our care and concern. This is the minimum of what justice demands. Our sisters and brothers have been harmed. We owe it to them to offer everything we have to make recompense. Listening to and believing victim survivors is critically important for all of us, but especially for bishops and priests. And it is just. Along with survivors, lay leadership is essential, laity with exceptional managerial expertise and experience, lay women and men of integrity, an exemplary character and reputation must be enlisted to work with church leaders. Restoring Catholic's trust requires cultural change based on transparency, accountability, competency, and justice. Since 2018, especially in light of requests for help from bishops, we have worked towards recommendations and solutions in service to church leaders and efforts to restore trust. When our son and daughter were little, my husband, who is here tonight, and I told them that if we ever got separated in a park, in a museum, in any public space, they should look for a mother with young children and go to her because she would keep them safe and know how to reunite us as quickly as possible. I didn't tell them to look for a cop or to look for a priest. I'm haunted by the question, where were the women at the tables of decision making when the crisis broke in 1995 or 2002 or 2018 and how different would things have looked if mothers, parents, had been included in leadership and decision making? Now let me be very clear. It is not that women are better than men or that parents are more judicious than those without children or that laity are more capable than priests. It's that diversity matters. Who is at the tables of decision making matters? We all need to solve for myopia. We are all myopic on our own or within our own narrowly defined groups. We only know what we know. We need the diversity of perspectives and experiences to be healthy and whole and wiser and more prudent. We need diversity to be good stewards, which is why women's leadership together with men matters and no solution moving forward will be complete without the presence and authority of women. Allow me to offer a few insights and recommendations we have gleaned. Note that these recommendations and insights are coming in many cases from discussions with bishops and provincials themselves. This is not pitting one part of the church against another. I think you will hear in this the sincerity of current church leaders to restore trust and advance the culture of accountability, justice, and integrity. So first, we have twin crises, abuse and distrust. The two are interrelated for the abuse crisis resulted from a culture of clericalism and a set of leadership and management practices that together permit it then covered up the abuse for decades. These crises offer an opportunity of transformation, however, to create a new culture of leadership through service and ethical management practices and a new partnership between the laity, religious, and ordained members of the church in co-responsibility. Second, silence is no longer an option. Third, one bishop suggested we would be wise to conduct a thorough review of clericalism embedded in the code of canon law and commit to making changes. It's a bold idea from a bishop. Another suggestion is to supplement the John Jay study which examined the causes and context of the sexual abuse crisis after 2002 with one that examines the misuse and abuse of power among church leaders. Fifth, invest in a human resource system that includes effective selection, training, assignment, evaluation, compensation, and continuing education for ordained and lay leaders. Sixth, reform seminary formation. Some excellent work is being done at the University of Notre Dame on this. Additionally, some very important insights came out of a gathering at Boston College in January of 2020 in which I had the privilege of participating. To serve the people of God is the document published in Origins from which we offer actionable recommendations. I would say one broad theme is integration. That seminarians should be integrated in classes with their lay counterparts. That women should be included on faculty and seminaries and that a premium should be placed on human and relational formation. Seventh, ensure that women are in meaningful positions of leadership at every level in the church even especially in the Roman Curia and are at the tables of decision making. Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have each called for a greater presence of women in the Roman Curia. In the past year Pope Francis has appointed women to senior positions in Vatican Dicasteries. Notably my friend Natalie Beckhardt, a French nun, was named an Undersecretary of the Vatican Synod of Bishops. The German Catholic Bishops Conference elected its first woman, a Lathaeologian, to serve as General Secretary. Pope Francis made it clear and official that the role of Lecter and Alter Server are open to male and female Catholics. Significantly last week, Pope Francis changed the governance structure of the Vatican, a change that allows for women to lead Dicasteries and as Cardinal Supic has noted play a leadership role even in the selection of bishops. Eight, ensure the highest level of ethics and integrity in all financial practices in the church. This is something we at Leadership Roundtable are taking very seriously this year with institutional partners across the U.S. on behalf of the church. One of the specific initiatives that has emerged from this is the formation of a network of chairs of diocesan finance councils to be better informed and prepared for their extremely important role. Nine, finally cultivate mercy. People are reeling throughout the whole church. As exacting as we must be in our insistence on true accountability and positive managerial reform, we would be wise to remember to do all things in love. This is core to what it means to be a follower of Christ. Cultural change is difficult, but difficult does not mean impossible. The best advice I can offer in times of anguish when the institutional church fails to live up to its potential or manifests ignoble qualities, clericalism, fear, secrecy, prejudice, or mediocrity comes from my teacher and spiritual director, a beloved sister of mercy, Margaret Farley. She said, remember what it is you most love about our church and membership in it. Name what you love, claim what you love. It will provide ballast to allow you to navigate with fidelity and focus when you are disappointed and discouraged. I have taken this advice to heart and highly recommend the discipline. Have you thought about this? When people ask you why you are Catholic or why you stay, what do you tell them? What do you most value about our faith? My list is long and wide. I love our church's rich intellectual tradition. I love our church's social justice teaching, sacramental life and imagination, mercy, the Eucharist, the primacy of conscience, prayer and transcendence, forgiveness, the preferential option for the poor and most vulnerable, the injunction always to be Christ-like. I love that where there is human suffering, the church is at the vanguard of providing relief, promoting justice and advocating for peace, witness Ukraine. I love our church's appreciation of beauty and aesthetics, the art and architecture, music and literature, our faith has inspired. I am daily grateful for Pope Francis. I love that he has given us Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti and that these provide people of good will a seminal roadmap to care for our common home and one another. And with the heartbreaking loss of my friend, Father Bob Beloyne, I am grateful more than I can say for our church's articulation of the communion of saints, the conviction of eternal life, the fact that love doesn't end with death. I submit that there are as many personally held and valued reasons why one loves the church as there are members of the church. Be clear often about what it is you must most love and value for it will sustain you in times of challenge and difficulty. Here are some additional reasons for hope. The opportunity to respond to these crises allows for, in fact, demands this new culture of leadership and a new relationship among all of us. And we are all invited to be part of this by virtue of our baptism. Working together is to be co-responsible. If there is any grace in the abuse crisis, it is that it roused laity out of our lethargy. This is our church. Healing is needed. To do nothing is to be complicit. Although it is impolitic for those of us who belong to and work on behalf of the church to say this, I will do so anyway. The Dallas Charter and the response to the revelations of abuse in 2002 yielded insignificant protections for children. One could argue that the very safest place for a child to be right now, anywhere in the world, is in the Catholic Church in the U.S. Safeguarding protocols were put into place. Hundreds of thousands of people working in the church or even serving as volunteers have been trained. Consciousness and awareness has been raised. Reports of abuse have plummeted. New cases are increasingly rare. Where I see hope is in acknowledging that the crisis in 2002 issued in some very important changes that serve to protect children. My hope is that the crisis of 2018 will issue in the same dramatic and effective changes in the area of reform and cultural change of management and leadership. If we go the extra mile, we will as a church, as part of our penance, be in a position to offer the rest of the world valuable insights and strategies to end the scourge of abuse of children wherever it occurs. I feel hopeful whenever a person decides to remain in the church and exercises responsibility to hold the church to higher levels of ethics, excellence, accountability and holiness. I find hope in your example, your presence here, the acknowledgement that it is much our responsibility to affect positive change as anyone's. And I find hope in the conviction of one of our newest saints, John Henry Newman, who said to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often. I admit to many troubled days of prayer about young adults leaving the church, about the role of women in the church, about the abuse crisis, the leadership crisis and acrimonious divisions within our faith family. How can we all be an effective part of the solution? I asked a close friend of mine, how does one replenish the reservoir of hope and dedication and faith in the midst of so many challenges? My friend's response was wise and perfectly suited for the liturgical season in which we find ourselves now as we prepare for the trituum. Pray with the image of the women standing by the cross. Pray with the image of the women giving witness to the resurrection. Scripture describes it as their fear giving way to a mounting sense of joy. We are nothing if not a pascal people. Deep within the Catholic imagination is the conviction that out of suffering and death comes new life. And we, the women and men of today, we can be or call to be bearers of this good news. We can affect change, lead by example to change the culture, lead witness to the new life to come, and be the interpreters of the signs of that new life for which we all yearn. Allow me to make one comment on the synod to which Pope Francis has invited all of us. I believe that there is no time like the present to initiate radically important hope filled matters of great potential and positive consequence. All of us have such an opportunity before us. With the synod, I know it is tempting to be pessimistic or worse cynical, but that is not what we're called to be. We are a people of hope. Imagine if we didn't have this opportunity for deep listening, for moments of silence to invoke the presence and stirring of the Holy Spirit, to speak in candor and charity, to reveal to one another what breaks our hearts and what ennobles us. Pope Francis has emphasized and prized co-responsibility or working, all of us working in partnership for the sake of the mission of the church. And this diversity matters. In our family and at leadership roundtable we have an expression, everyone has a piece of the wisdom. Now emerging from a pandemic where no part of the church or globe was spared of that experience, it seems particularly fortuitous to engage in dialogue, deep listening, prayer, imagination, attentiveness to the Holy Spirit and to each other, to literally dream a better way forward, particularly in light of the looming environmental challenges. Please, that also bind us as a human family with a common home. Diversity factors greatly in the synodal process. We simply need all voices, all backgrounds, all experiences, all wisdom. And the Synod will be as effective as our own responsibility for it. We are being asked to participate and to be channels of inclusion for others who fall outside the normal parish or diocesan community. This is incumbent upon all of us. It is lay agency. Have a preferential option for young adults and those on the margins for disaffected Catholics, wounded Catholics. I've been struck from the beginning at how much an emphasis Sister Natalie Beckhard leading the global synod with Cardinal Grech herself puts on including young adults, not just as participants but as members of the leadership teams facilitating the synod. In closing, the Catholic Church is the largest global humanitarian network with enormous potential and therefore responsibility to address human suffering and complex global challenges. It is also the vehicle through which the Catholic faith is transmitted to nearly 1.3 billion people. Sui generous with a divine mission, the Church is distinct from secular institutions. Nevertheless, it is comprised of people, facilities, property and finances which deserve to be handled with the highest levels of ethics, care, accountability and contemporary best managerial practices. That level of care should be commensurate with the degree to which its mission is deemed important, urgent, beneficial and salvific. Deep within the Catholic imagination, if not universally applied in practice, is a mago day, the conviction that all people are created in God's likeness. All forms of prejudice and discrimination are contrary to Catholic teaching. This faith claim alone argues for the full participation, value and equal respect for women as for men, girls as for boys. Decades of substantive Catholic social teaching have brought inviolable insight to how Catholics and people of good will ought to comport and conduct ourselves. An especially important assertion is the preferential option for the poor. Those of us most in need, most marginalized and most vulnerable, deserve the particular attention, care and advocacy of those of us to whom much has been given. It bears noting that women and children are disproportionately adversely affected by poverty, war, climate change, illness, unemployment and forced migration and least likely to cause or contribute to such deleterious conditions. The church is embroiled in a particular set of crises. Better analysis of root causes, more effective solutions and a commitment to positive cultural change is best achieved when women are included at the tables of decision making. Add to this the growing disaffection of young adults with the church. Young women and men need role models and clear understandings that their service to the church will not be met with gratuitous limitations on the exercise of their full complement of gifts and talents as they live out their vocation. For those who value the church's mission and vitality, its impact is a global humanitarian network and the restoration of trust in church leadership. Concerns about the role of women is a matter of managerial and moral urgency. We can help the church emulate what it advocates. We can work toward better human resource policies and structures that take seriously lay vocations. We can reimagine seminary formation to ensure that it is conducive to healthy lay clergy collaboration and co-responsibility. We can insist that a candidate's ability to work collaboratively and effectively and especially with women be a requirement in the selection and appointment of bishops. We can establish effective mentoring programs for young Catholic women and men. We can seek out mentors and serve as mentors over the whole course of our lives. And we can expand our imagination and appoint laity, even women, to the diplomatic corps, communications apostolates, and prefectures and presidencies of Dicasteries. In closing, let's be the church we yearn to see. A more relevant church to young adults, a more joyful church, a church of integrity, ethics, trust, justice, and openness. A safe environment for the most vulnerable. A church worthy of profound generosity. A church at the forefront of justice, peace, and charity. Let us be bearers of the good news, witnesses to new life. Help to give faithful, articulate, prophetic voice to the importance of baptismal rights and responsibilities. Be part of the global transformation of consciousness that celebrates, invites, affirms, and encourages the genuine collaboration of laity, religious, and clergy in the service of the church's mission. A church the world needs because the world needs solace, healing, peace, hope, mercy, generosity, and the light and love of Christ. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. And now it's your turn, you in the audience here and the people I have online. So I'm going to give first opportunity to the crowd here. Is there a questioner? Professor Della Valley. Great. This is Nancy Della Valley from Fairfield University. I just wondered if you could help us position, particularly given who you are and what you do, the polarization among the bishops that I have found so disheartening. The thing is that you function both, lots of people just know they're parish and then they read the news, but you function in such a way that you see the whole texture of the church up and down and also globally, which is a perspective that we don't all have. The other thing that I appreciated so much about what you said is you are just unabashedly a fan. You know, you are not standing out there trying to figure out what's going on with the church. You're not a cultural critic. You love the church. You are working within the church. You are trying to make this work. How then do you position the kinds of polarizing activities and voices that we hear among the U.S. bishops? I find it heartbreaking, particularly in light of the fact that we are called around one Eucharistic table. I think that our church has manifested the same divisiveness that we see in our country, in our neighborhoods, in our communities. I don't believe that... I think that those divisions are exaggerated and that what we need is to find ways to do as Pope Francis has asked us to encounter and accompany one another, particularly people very different than us. I think the call to the Synod in its best expression is attempting to achieve that, to invite people who may vote for different parties or any number of ways are distinct from one another around a table, to speak in candor and charity, to presume goodness in one another, and to find where we... what we have in common and where we can be greater aligned. It really does deeply distress me to see these divisions played out in our church in particular, because as we experienced it in our country, I found myself wanting the church to play the mediating role, to be the place where people of diverse views and opinions and seemingly polarized notions could come together and correct that. I still have faith that the church can play that role, but it's going to take all of us to be part of it. Thanks for the question. Okay, it's the turn of the people out there, and this question is from someone many of us know, a friend of Fairfield University, Phyllis Zagano, and she's asking this. She says, I agree with your comments on the possibilities for the synod, but there are many dioceses in the U.S. and around the world that are not participating, my own included. I know that there are other groups holding Zoom synodal meetings, but what can be done to point out that so many U.S. bishops do not want to listen and seem to only hope that Pope Francis will go away? That is, is there any answer to the clericalism at the heart of the church? Thank you, Phyllis. Thank you, Phyllis. I, again, the distress is me not to take full advantage of this unique, once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of this global synod. And it's not just a synod for synod's sake. It's not just a one, one soft conversation to have your opinion registered, your views shared. It is learning to live synodally or learning to move into a future where we are able to address the polarization and the divisions where we can, we can respect the diversity of opinions and ways that we care, but we still come together and recognize our, our, our common love for one another, our belonging to the, to humankind. The synod, you know, many people can, can critique the state of affairs and there's value in that. We need that. You've heard much of it in my, my talk even. But when it comes to action and taking a positive step, we can do that too. And where do we want to put most of our energy? For me, it is in identifying those dioceses that are doing this exceptionally well, even in this climate and finding channels outside of the diocesan structure to, to reach people that are in every diocese. We're trying to do this on, actually on behalf of the Bishops Conference with what's called Region 16, which is essentially the constellation of national Catholic organizations of all kinds. And that reaches people in every state and every diocese. So that's where I would put my energy, Phyllis. Now the question from the crowd. All right, I have one more line here. How would you balance the seemingly unquestionable, unquenchable appetite for dollars for abuse settlements and the stewardship obligations of church leaders? Do you think the dioceses that file bankruptcy in order to limit legal settlements are morally appropriate? There's a lot in that, that question. And I don't think my answer will do it justice. It's, it's tending to something very serious at the heart of the pain and trauma that, that has been inflicted on all of us, frankly, because of the abuse crisis. How we solve that, at least from our leadership roundtable perspective, is by putting victim survivors front and center of our care, having victim survivors be part of the determination for how questions like that get resolved. The world needs the church, but it needs the church to be an exemplary paragon of trustworthiness, ethics, competency, and integrity. And, and that's what we're working toward, so that it can be a good steward of all that it has been entrusted with. I have a question from Christian Barry. Carrie, thank you for your inspiring talk. You have a chapter in your book titled, Development is Ministry. In your experience, have you also witnessed development as a channel for evangelization? Definitely. So this, I'll tell a story from the book, which illustrates that. So what, you know, you mentioned that I was the director of development at St. Thomas More, and we raised $75 million, who's counting I am. It was the hardest thing we ever did, certainly, that I ever did in my life. And yet, and I wasn't trained in it, I should never have been hired, and I couldn't believe they wanted me to do this role. But what I was committed to was bringing a Catholic intellectual and spiritual center of consequence to fruition, and raising the bar of Catholic campus ministry, not just at Yale, but all over the world. Because I care so much about young adults, and you deserve it. You deserve the best. Nobody believed we could raise any money at all, and we weren't trained in it. It was just this priest and me, and we broke every cardinal rule of fundraising. But we shared a conviction that we wanted everyone we knew and loved, and everybody we would meet to have the opportunity to be part of this big vision, this exciting, wonderful thing we were trying to bring to life. And we announced the goal of the campaign before we had raised even a dollar, and blurted out the big total, I think at that time, it was a $5 million goal. And this elderly gentleman sitting in the back, with kind of worn clothes, approached us afterwards, introduced himself, his name was Tom Golden, and he said, I'd like to get involved. I hear what you're saying about raising money and your vision, I'd like to get involved. And I literally thought, thankfully, here's somebody who cares about what I'm saying, maybe he can help us with mailings. It took us probably four years after meeting with him many times to realize he was a person of incredible affluence and wealth. He had never married no brothers and sisters, no nieces and nephews, and he was looking for something to do with his life's estate. And he was elderly, and so he sort of found us. And I think it was to our credit that we embraced him without knowing anything about his material wealth. That was how we lived and comported fundraising as a ministry. So the story that speaks to evangelization is as follows. This man changed the course of our campaign because he eventually said that if we raise the money from other alumni to build the building and build it in his lifetime, he would leave us $25 million or 75% of his estate, whichever was greater at the time of his death. And then he said, pray that I live a long, long life because every year this increases. And of course, by this point, he was our very good friend. So he comes to Mass and it's Easter Sunday, the high point of our liturgical calendar. He drives about an hour from his home, comes into Mass. My husband and I are sitting with him very near the front. It is packed with students. The homily is magnificent. The flowers are gorgeous. The music is just outrageously beautiful. Joy is in the air. And Tom Golden next to me is quietly weeping throughout the entire liturgy. And I know what a private man he is. So I don't draw any attention to this, but I'm really struck by it. He is weeping throughout the entire liturgy. After Mass is over, it takes us a long time to get out because it's so crowded, standing room only. And I turn to Tom and I say, Tom, thank you for choosing this sacred space on this sacred day to join us for the celebration of the Eucharist. You bless us by your presence. And Tom says to me, Carrie, I probably should not confess this to you. But this is my first Mass in over 40 years. And I remember thinking if we don't raise $15 for this capital campaign, at least in the way we have comported ourselves in this fundraising effort, reconciled this man with his God and with his faith community. And that is both ministry and evangelization. Thank you. Thank you. We have a couple more questions. A couple more. Such a good note to end on. I know it was. It was, but I don't want to disappoint the last person on the list here. And I have a little question for you, too. But so Carolyn Recycus, who is well known here, has this question. She says you touched on racism. Could you say more about a greater investment in inclusion at all levels and in all ways? And when you've done that, I'll ask you one question and we'll be done. Any, any one of us that has been systemically excluded and hurt by the actions of the rest of us deserve the particular attentiveness, especially of people of faith. So I, you know, I this love that Nancy pointed out, that's hopefully obvious to you this love I have for the church. It's not love in its many ways that it fails to meet the mark. It's love of its potential. And, and so the church has a lot of record. It has a lot of examination of conscience to do when it comes to racial injustice and history. And I want it to play a leading role in this restorative justice and in acknowledging our complicity in it. So I am not the right spokesperson for this, but I would absolutely prioritize it and I think it's incumbent on all of us. Okay, last question, my privilege. So in recent weeks, Pope Francis has engaged in a very thorough reform of the Roman Curia, the bureaucracy of the church, the Vatican. And in doing so, he has made one very remarkable statement. He has uncoupled governance from what is called the power of orders. He has said governance in the church stems from baptism, not from ordination. My question is, how far do you think that goes? Let's hope it goes very far. I mean, that's exactly the argument that my women colleagues representing their families, Catholic, philanthropies and I made to every cardinal in Rome over three pontificates spanning 11 years. We were urging the conscious decoupling of that to allow for women to be at the tables of decision making and in positions of meaningful leadership along with men. Not because that is what women deserve. Of course it's what women deserve, but our approach and the fidelity of our visits and conversation was predicated on an absolute conviction that that's what the church deserved. The church deserves everything we can bring it to enable it to thrive, unencumbered. The church should benefit from the best wisdom, the best proven practices and every institution, the US military, just name an institution. They always started out excluding women and eventually over time allowing women together with men to serve at the highest levels. And in every case, that strengthened the mission of the institution. I want the church to benefit in the same way. So strong move, Pope Francis. Thank you, Kerry. Will you join me in thanking Kerry for a terrific talk? Thank you all for being here online or in the room. The next event in our program is, well, there are two more events actually. In the library at 5 p.m. next Wednesday, we have a workshop on the topic racial justice and the call for reparations. And a week and a day from today in this very room at seven o'clock, we will have Burton Vizotsky, a distinguished rabbi from New York, giving the annual Jewish Christian engagement lecture in which he's going to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan. So I hope to see all of you there at all of these events. Thank you for being here.