Over 3,300 attend annual women’s conference

Speakers from across the country gathered for the 17th annual Columbus Catholic Women’s Conference on Saturday, Feb. 15, encouraging more than 3,300 women in attendance that they were created for this moment to be a gift for others and that they have much to offer a broken and dark world in desperate need.

The conference was held in Kasich Hall at the Ohio Expo Center. Women of all ages attended and had an opportunity to participate in Adoration, confession and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Relics were also on display from the National Centre for Padre Pio.

The schedule included talks from Carrie Schuchts Daunt, an author and speaker and content developer for the John Paul II Healing Center from Tallahassee, Florida; Sarah Swafford, of Atchison, Kansas, the founder of Emotional Virtue Ministries and a speaker covering topics of faith, relationships and interior confidence; and Sister Mercedes Torres, OP (Order of Preachers), the vocations director for the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The conference also featured talks from Father John Riccardo, a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit and executive director of ACTS XXIX, a ministry designed to proclaim the gospel in an attractive way and equip clergy and lay leaders for the present moment, and Mary Guilfoyle, a missionary with ACTS XXIX and co-host of the “You Were Born for This” podcast with Father Riccardo.

Women were present from various dioceses, including Cincinnati, Toledo, Steubenville and Cleveland, as well as several attendees from out of state.

More than 40 priests were available to hear confessions, and 86 religious sisters attended the conference. An Adoration chapel was also open throughout the day.

More than 60 vendor tables were set up, ranging from religious orders to local ministries.

The Vigil Project provided music for conference.

Jennifer Rice, director of missionary discipleship at Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church, served as emcee for the second year. It was also the second time Delaware St. Mary Church served as the host parish for the conference.

Bishop Earl Fernandes, who was unable to be present this year, sent a recorded video message that was played for the women present.

Daunt opened the lineup of speakers. 

A wife, mother to nine children and daughter of Dr. Bob Schuchts – founder of the John Paul II Healing Center and author and therapist of more than 30 years – Daunt serves as a developer and content creator for the center’s women’s conference “Undone.”

When contemplating what to share with the crowd of more than 3,000 women, Daunt said she felt the Lord wanted her to offer a part of her story where she knew she was created for this moment.

She recalled a wife and mother at her parish who taught classes on Theology of the Body. Daunt said the woman wrote on the board one day, “Become who you are.” As she looked at the board, the line struck her and memories began flooding back.

In high school and early college, Daunt shared that she wanted to be an underwear model. A lie had taken root in her that her body should be idolized.

She later prayed, “Lord, help me to reconcile these things.” She said God began to show places in her heart that had been knotted.

In middle school, she explained, she wanted to be anybody but herself. She wanted somebody to see and know her. Those desires continued into high school, where she found there was something “socially acceptable” about her, and so began the lie that her body was meant to be idolized.

Years later, when Daunt was pregnant with her fourth child, she recalled praying in an Adoration chapel and hearing the Lord say to her, “You’re going to be stretched.” She responded by giving her “fiat,” or “yes,” to God, although she did not know to what exactly.

The pregnancy was not only physically stretching – she later birthed a 10-pound baby boy – but also stretched her emotionally. It was a difficult period, and she received demeaning comments.

However, she recalled holding her newborn son, John, whose name means “gift of God’s mercy,” in the middle of the night. He looked up at her with “piercing blue eyes,” and she said, she heard Christ’s words, “This is My Body given up for you.”

In that moment, Daunt learned what her body was truly made for.

“What was beautiful about my body was that I was made and created to be a gift,” she said. “Each of us are made and created to be a gift.”

She explained that there is no division between body, heart and spirit. God is a communion of persons. When He created woman, He created her in a “very beautiful and particular way.

“As women, we are made and created with the capacity to receive,” Daunt said.

She explained how women are made with an “openness,” and a woman’s soul is crafted as a shelter in which others’ souls can unfold. Women, she said, are created to be life bearers and life savers.

She acknowledged that many women do not feel loved, seen or that they have what it takes. So many, Daunt said, in their lives, have had broken places and traumas. As a result, women often do not love who they are and the truth of who they were created to be.

“Each of us have places that need to be attended to,” she said, that have never been looked at or acknowledged.

Daunt said she is grateful she went through a healing process so she now has a greater capacity to receive and give the gift of herself. Doing so, she explained, can also help save individuals who “need that soft place to land.” Women need opportunities to begin to heal.

“Your mission is awaiting,” she said.

Daunt’s talk was followed by Swafford, the author of “Emotional Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships.” Swafford speaks at schools, parishes, retreats and conferences worldwide. She and her husband, Dr. Andrew, a theology professor at Benedictine College, are parents to six children.

She said everybody today is “playing with a deck of cards that no one in human history has played with.” She listed social media and online dating as examples.

This moment in time is also filled with much fear and isolation.

She likened aspects of the present moment to Communism in Europe. Catholics at the time lived among Communist spies and in a “conform or be canceled” culture, Swafford said. Many Catholic young adults escaped to the Polish mountains with Pope St. John Paul II, then Father Karol Wojtyla, to talk about God.

She told the audience that they also need “zones of freedom” today.

“We have to be able to see the places in our heart where we ache the most,” she said.

Swafford explored the “cycle of use.” She invited those present to reflect on a time when they used or were used by somebody. She apologized for the times they have not been loved well.

She then asked each woman to voice aloud, “I will not use you, and I will not let you use me.”

Swafford explained that individuals can often look in the wrong places for God. She offered the example of turning to her husband to fix certain problems when only God can.

“It is so easy as women to want to make a man our God,” she said.

She explained how many young adults today try to be perfect and find someone perfect for a spouse. She said young men and women end up worshiping each other.

She played a clip from The Chosen, a television series based on the life of Christ. The scene was a reenactment of the healing of a man paralyzed for 38 years, recounted in the fifth chapter of St. John’s gospel. Jesus asks the man, “Do you want to be healed?”

Swafford pointed out that the man answers with an excuse, but Christ shows the man that all he needs is Him. She said that is her cry for each woman present.

“The greatest gift you can give is your own healing,” she said.

Sister Mercedes followed Swafford’s talk by sharing some of her story.

She entered the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in 2011 and professed her final vows in 2019.

After college, she moved to New York. Her cousin there, she said, had a very alive and beautiful Catholic faith. She invited Sister Mercedes over for ministry gatherings at her home.

She recognized that people there loved her in a different way. However, she said, she was at a point where she did not want to be seen outside of the house with them.

At the time, she was working for a Manhattan-based non-profit, planning trips and bringing medical supplies and doctors to Cuba and Nicaragua.

At the invitation of her cousin’s friends, she attended a retreat. 

She went to confession and participated in a night of Adoration. Sister Mercedes explained that she had a moment of truly knowing Christ’s love for her. She said she knew it was Jesus there and she had to respond.

The retreat was on Divine Mercy Sunday, and when Sister Mercedes later took the religious name “Mercedes” after Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes (Our Lady of Mercy), that would be her feast day.

In the time after the retreat, Mercedes began working with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and Sisters of Life in New York. She said it was her first time seeing “young, habited religious.” She recalled being struck that they were “normal.”

In spending more time with them, she recognized that their joy for consecrated life corresponded with the joy in her heart.

More than 3,000 women present then participated in Adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The Lord was processed in a monstrance carried by Father Riccardo, who spoke later that afternoon.

As he carried the Blessed Sacrament up and down the aisles, women fell to their knees, adoring the Eucharistic Lord.

After a lunch break and time to visit vendor tables, attendees enjoyed a performance by The Vigil Project. The group’s co-director, Andrea Thomas of Cincinnati, is a worship leader dedicated to restoring devotional prayer in the Catholic Church. Other group members come from Nashville, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In his talk that afternoon, Father Riccardo described the present moment as a time of tremendous despair and anxiety. He attributed it to “the new Great Depression.”

He shared startling statistics that the suicide rate is up 30 percent in the United States and up 50 percent among women during the last 20 years.

He also shared data that one in three teenage girls consider suicide. In girls ages 10 to 14, suicide is the second leading cause of death.

Father Riccardo said Christendom, a time shaped by a Christian worldview, is gone or rapidly leaving.

Contemplating where the “new order” is, he told women gathered, “I think you’re the new order.” He said God has put a call on their lives – the greatest mission: to fish for men and women (Mark 1:17).

He encouraged attendees to open up their homes. He said the home is where reality meets the Church.

In being hospitable and hosting individuals in the home, Father Riccardo said, culture will encounter God. He noted that the word “hospital” in Latin means “house for strangers.”

“Your home is a hospital, and your kitchen table is the operating table,” he said.

Practicing hospitality and turning people back to the sacraments and the Church will give hope to an increasingly anxious generation, he explained.

Guilfoyle, who has served for years in parish ministry, was the final speaker of the day. She focused on identity, which, she said, is a universal struggle.

She said the enemy – the devil – leads women into deep despair and doubt, robbing them of their confidence in God. He preys on their identity.

“How we see ourselves has very little to do with how we are,” she said.

Guilfoyle reminded women that they are good at pretending, wearing a mask and acting as if they have it all together. Women struggle because they often depend on what other people think of them. They let the enemy or others define them.

“The core of who we are can become twisted,” she explained, leading a woman to think she needs to be perfect at everything. Trying to do so, however, can replace the pursuit of God.

She said they need to know how the enemy works.

The devil calls individuals names such as “abandoned,” “unwanted,” “a mess,” “addict” or “rejected,” but she told them, they are not who the enemy says they are.

The conference concluded with a 4 p.m. vigil Mass celebrated by Father David Sizemore, pastor at Newark St. Francis de Sales Church.

Concelebrants included Fathers Riccardo and David Johnstone, chaplain for the Columbus Catholic Women’s Conference. Deacons Felix Azzola and Matthew Paulus from Delaware St. Mary Church assisted.

Music for the Mass was provided by the Columbus Catholic Women’s Conference Choir and Sharon Silleck, director of sacred music at Lancaster Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption.