I hope our project can be a way to live into a vision for the Church’s renewal as we listen and seek to learn how the Holy Spirit guides, leads and presses us forward. The diaconate touches my own vocational desire to proclaim the Gospel and help move our faith out into the world. 

You can contact Casey at casey@discerningdeacons.org.

Casey Stanton has spent over a decade working in the field of social concerns ministries within parish life and as part of broader, faith-based coalitions. She most recently served as Adult Faith Formation minister at Immaculate Conception Parish in Durham, North Carolina. She holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School where she graduated with a certificate in prison studies. A Boston native, Casey is proud to make a home in Durham with her husband Felipe and their two children, Micaela and Teddy. She is a product of Sacred Heart education and invokes St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, along with Dorothy Day, to accompany her in helping to lead and shepherd this new project! She loves reading poetry out loud and seeing her favorite band, Hardworker, perform live (back when we went to concerts). 

I’m excited we’re building a bridge of sisterhood and brotherhood to the Amazon. It is here, in the peripheries of the Amazon, where the Holy Spirit is calling forth Catholic women to preach and preside at baptisms, weddings and funerals, with the blessing of their bishops. They work toward the vision of a listening, participatory, synodal Church that is grounded in caring for each other and our common home.

You can contact Ellie at ellie@discerningdeacons.org.

Ellie Hidalgo served for 12 years as the pastoral associate and previously as a pastoral assistant for Dolores Mission Catholic Church and School, a Jesuit parish in the Latin American immigrant community of Boyle Heights, just east of downtown Los Angeles, California. This small church with a giant heart is known for its restorative justice ministries and faith-based community organizing, and for being the home parish of Homeboy Industries. Ellie holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Pastoral Theology from Loyola Marymount University. She was commissioned as a pastoral associate for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2013. Inspired by the prophetic role of grandmothers, mothers, women and girls in bringing forth God’s dream for God’s people on earth, Ellie has preached for Catholic Women Preach in 2018 and 2020. She recently moved to Miami, Florida, to live closer to her family. She enjoys walking, writing, telling or listening to a good story, and cooking.

I am here to invite and connect people to the living discernment about receiving women as deacons in our global Church. I have seen women struggle in the mistaken belief that it may not even be discussed, and I have witnessed the joy and hope in their eyes when they learn the pope has invited the discussion! I dream women will have the ability to discern this call. I hope one day my daughters will hear women preach at Mass and see that women speak with knowledge and authority about Jesus. I hope children will never again experience our faith as “just about boys,” as my daughter declared when she was six. It is an honor to serve the wider Church in this mission of Discerning Deacons.

You can contact Lisa at lisa@discerningdeacons.org.

Lisa Amman, the deputy director of engagement for Discerning Deacons, has learned, prayed and worked in Catholic institutions her whole life. Inspired by the civic and ecclesial leadership of Benedictine sisters, she attended the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota. She served for five years as the director of social justice at her parish in St. Paul, and she worked for 10 years as a community organizer with ISAIAH, an alliance of more than 100 faith congregations. She coached, mentored and trained thousands of lay and ordained people of faith to advance the Gospel vision of justice and equal dignity in public policy. She is an active member of Saint Thomas More Parish, where she is currently working her way through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in everyday life. A native of Louisiana, she and her husband have two daughters. Lisa’s work to ordain women deacons is for her daughters.

I am excited to bring my passions for teaching, writing and community-building to the synodal movement that Discerning Deacons is helping to cultivate. I am inspired by educators who remind us of the transformative power of learning for individuals and whole communities, and by community leaders, often women, who model inclusive ways to vision and work toward change. I revel in the creativity and possibility that comes with integrating the liberatory dimensions of our Catholic traditions with the diverse charisms of Catholic education.  

You can contact Maureen at maureen@discerningdeacons.org

Maureen O’Connell has more than 20 years of experience in Catholic higher education, the majority of them anchored in teaching and learning spaces oriented by social justice pedagogies. In addition to her work with Discerning Deacons, she is Professor of Christian Ethics at La Salle University in her native city of Philadelphia where offers courses in peace and justice, racial justice, feminist engagement with religion, community organizing, and place-based learning. She is also engaged with faith-based organizing through POWER, Faith in Action’s affiliate there. She has authored three books, the most recent of which, Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness (Beacon Press, 2021), examines her family’s history with racism in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. She holds a BA in History from Saint Joseph’s University and a PhD in Christian Ethics from Boston College. She and her husband Dan live in close proximity to her parents, siblings, and niece and nephews; romps with her dog, Smiley, in the woods near her house in the world’s largest urban park are among her favorite things. 

I’m thrilled to be a part of the creative and dynamic team at Discerning Deacons working to celebrate, draw out, and elevate the relational, prophetic, and pastoral leadership of women throughout the Church—at a moment, no less, when the Church has re-committed to cultivating a culture of encounter and deep listening. As the Church and society at large face the cascading and overlapping crises before us, we are called to be “protagonists of transformation,” to borrow Pope Francis’s words, embodying a community grounded in Gospel love and justice. Throughout history, women have been at the forefront of transformation, and I believe that is no less true today than it has ever been. I’m humbled by the opportunity to journey together with women throughout the world who are answering God’s call to transformational leadership in the Church—and with men who are ready to receive, recognize, and welcome the Phoebes in our midst.

You can contact Anna at anna@discerningdeacons.org

Anna Robertson worked as Director of Youth and Young Adult Mobilization at Catholic Climate Covenant and Campus Minister for Retreats at Seattle University, along with various experiences supporting families of women experiencing incarceration, serving as a hospital chaplain, conducting research on collective memory in El Salvador, and accompanying students on international immersions at the intersection of faith and justice in Latin America. The common thread running through her work has been a passion for helping people articulate their stories and step into their power as protagonists of transformation toward a more just world. 

Anna is a cradle Catholic with an eye toward the threads of mysticism that cut across faith traditions. Anna was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee and, since graduating from high school, she has called many places home, including Cincinnati, Central America, West Virginia, Boston, and Seattle. She has a Master’s of Theological Studies from Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Xavier University in Ohio. In her free time, Anna enjoys practicing yoga, playing music, riding her electric bike around Seattle, jumping into bodies of water, cooking, reading, and having heart-to-hearts with friends.