Registration open for 2020 DCCW convention

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SALT LAKE CITY — With a theme of “Let Your Light Shine,” the Diocese of Salt Lake City Council of Catholic Women will hold their 92nd annual convention April 25-26. The event will include several presentations from nationally renowned speakers, along with local participants.  

Award-winning author and educator Maria Morera Johnson will give the keynote address on “Living in the Light of Eternity” on Saturday morning. Johnson, a native of Cuba who now lives near Mobile, Ala., will share her experiences and encourage women to become witnesses in the world and to share Christ’s light in all that they do.

On Sunday morning, guest speaker Mary Ann Berzins, University of Utah assistant vice president of workforce planning for human resources, will share her story in “A Journey of an Unassuming Woman.”

The focus of two DCCW commissions, leadership and legislative, will be addressed in presentations at this year’s convention. In the leadership commission presentation Saturday morning, Emmie Gardner, Holy Cross Ministries CEO, will give highlights of her career of more than 35 years in “Servant Leadership and Coming Full Circle: How the Sisters of the Holy Cross Influenced my Career.”

In Saturday afternoon’s legislative commission presentation, “Saintly Women: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” Deacon Mike Bulson will speak about where the Spirit may be leading women today, and will share stories of women in Church history.

Bishop Oscar A. Solis will celebrate the Vigil Mass for convention-goers Saturday at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. He will also speak at the Woman of the Year banquet later that evening.  

All Catholic women in the state should attend the convention even if they are not affiliated with their parish Council of Catholic Women, DCCW President Casey Pond said.

For a participant, the annual convention “lifts her up,” Pond said. “I think it restores her faith, depending on where she is in her life, in the Church, that she’s not alone, there are a lot of other women out there” trying to follow Christ’s call to service who may feel isolated, “especially women from rural areas or maybe they live in a neighborhood where there’s not a lot of Catholic women. It’s just a really good time to connect and to realize you’re a part of something bigger … and something much more important: the Church and the sisterhood that is Catholic women.”

The convention will include the presentation of awards and the installation of the new board. There will also be a prayer room, exhibitors, an NCCW table, and sales tables where convention-goers may purchase books, African crafts, candles and jams handcrafted by the Carmelite nuns. Along with the awards banquet, the convention will provide breakfast both days and Sunday and lunch Sunday for attendees.  

On Sunday morning there will be a memorial service for council members who have passed away during the last two years.  The annual collections (service project), at the convention will gather items for local women’s homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and the YWCA (specifics at dccwutah.org).

“I firmly believe that any woman who comes to the convention will leave with something positive or something new from one of the speakers,” Pond said. “I would just love women to come. This is really something else; if someone has not been, it would be worth trying, and you would want to come back. It’s very, very social but it’s also very spiritually uplifting and educational.”