The awardees of the 2020 Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship:
The Women’s Ordination Conference and the Durkin-Dierks Family are happy to announce the awardees of the 2020 Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship: Erin Conway, Claire Hitchens, Anne Tropeano
Please join us in celebrating the courage and resilience of Erin, Claire, and Anne, who walk a prophetic path toward equality. We challenge our Church to open its doors to truly listen to their voices and learn from their experiences. God is calling them to lead!
Erin Conway
Originally from the great city of Cleveland, Ohio, Erin graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2009 with a BA in the Program of Liberal Studies and Theology and then from Loyola University of Maryland in 2012 with a Master of Arts in Teaching and a concentration in Secondary English. Currently, she is pursuing a Master of Theological Studies at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley.
Before beginning her studies at JST, she spent 10 years accompanying young people as a classroom teacher. She began as a 7th grade English teacher at Saint Ignatius Loyola Academy, an all-boys Jesuit middle school in Baltimore, Maryland. Next, she moved across the country to Palm Desert, California where she taught junior Theology and directed the Service & Immersion programs at Xavier College Prep High School. Most recently, Erin taught senior Theology and launched a service-learning course at Saint Martin de Porres, Cleveland’s Cristo Rey High School. Erin also had the opportunity to accompany people as a volleyball coach, a Kairos director, a summer camp counselor, an immersion trip leader, and a youth minister at my parish.
Her time in the classroom undoubtedly shaped her theology. Each day she had the privilege of talking to young people about the ways God was calling them to transform the world around them. More days than not, she found myself sitting back and listening to her students’ stories, marveling at their resilience, and admiring their faith. They spent time together in prayer, reflection, and conversation, attempting to build community in a world that sorely lacks it. God was never far away during this time.
Uniquely, during her 10 years at Catholic Jesuit schools, she never worked on a staff with a Jesuit (or any other ordained person). This experience certainly helped her reimagine what our church could and should be. As our principal at Xaiver always said, her role as a teacher was to become a “living chapel,” a space where students could encounter Christ. Rather than following the example or instruction of ordained men, she was given the freedom to discern how to best accompany students and live out that mission.
Transitioning to graduate studies has pushed Erin to imagine even more what church could be. It has given her the words to name the power she has always felt inside me. Somewhat on purpose, somewhat by God’s grace, her experience at JST has been one long journey of deconstruction. Discovering feminist theology has provided her with a new form of faith that listens to my experiences and begins to respond to the underlying frustrations she carries with her. Erin has found within our own tradition interpretations and tools that uplift, validate, and honor women. This revelation has changed her. She imagines more and more what can be when women’s voices are welcomed and centered.
She is incredibly grateful to the Women’s Ordination Conference for supporting her as she continues to dream!
Claire Hitchins
Claire Hitchins is called to tend sacred spaces where connection, healing, imagination and justice-making become possible. In 2014 she first named this vocation as a call to priesthood – but as a young Catholic woman, she couldn’t imagine what this could mean. Her winding discernment path led her from food justice work in Richmond, Virginia to living among marginalized communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia with Maryknoll, walking across Spain on El Camino de Santiago, to accompanying immigrant farm-workers as a Jesuit Volunteer in Yakima, Washington.
In 2016 she returned to her home state of Virginia to record and release her debut album, These Bodies. She toured periodically, sharing music as medicine all over the country. When not on the road, she stayed busy training as a hospital chaplain and co-creating Charis, an ecumenical community of young adults in Charlottesville, Virginia. Claire was deeply formed by the three years she lived at Charis, sharing in rhythms of prayer and prophetic work in response to white supremacy, climate catastrophe and capitalism. It was with this community that she was baptized into activism by the waters of the Cannonball River at Standing Rock, confirmed by the Spirit while singing and chanting in Black Lives Matter protests, anointed by the holy tears of Trans Women seeking asylum from Central America, and sustained by the broken and blessed Body of Christ in living room liturgies.
Claire’s search to connect with other Catholic women called to priesthood led her to a Call To Action (CTA) conference and the fertile fringes of the Catholic Church where she’s been scheming and seeding transformation with fellow Catholic change-makers ever since! Claire is blessed to design and direct Re/Generation, CTA’s mentoring and leadership program connecting young Catholic change-makers with each other and with elders to support them in their work for justice in the Church.
After years of scrappy, self-directed, community-based, experiential learning, Claire is excited to pursue a more formal formation process. She will begin her Masters of Divinity at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee in Fall 2020! There she hopes to deepen her inner and outer work of dismantling oppressive systems and theologies, widen her imagination around how church can best serve the healing, repair and liberation for which all of creation groans, and more fully incarnate a new form of priesthood.
Claire is moved to reverence for what is holy within, among and beyond each of us, delighting in the places where heaven and earth meet. She comes alive when she is with people who can be wholly and holy human together – in all our brokenness and brilliance and raw, resilient radiance.
Claire received her BA in Religious Studies from The University of Virginia in 2013 and served with Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest ’15-’16.
Anne Tropeano
Anne Tropeano is in formation with the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. She will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 2021.
Anne has a deep love of the Society of Jesus and Ignatian Spirituality, which has blossomed over twelve years of ministering with the Jesuits. She earned a Master of Divinity from Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, and has worked in several parishes in the Jesuits West Province. Anne has coordinated liturgy, designed faith formation for young adults, organized parish events, led retreats, provided spiritual direction, and managed parish operations. She also has a love of pastoral care, including ministering to those who are homebound and accompanying individuals during the end of life. Anne adores animals and rescues senior dogs with special needs, giving them life with dignity through their last days. One of her deepest desires is to use her parish experience to found and pastor an inclusive Roman Catholic community in the Jesuit tradition.
In addition to her formation in the Catholic Church, Anne has a Master’s degree in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from San Diego State University, along with 22 years of experience in strategic communications, professional writing, and marketing and promotions. In addition to working for social justice, she plans to harness this background to organize Roman Catholics to win a priesthood that welcomes women.
Deeply grounded in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Anne has a passionate interest in participating in the discernment of the next era of the Catholic Church, how young adults and lay women and men fit in, and how Ignatian spirituality can be at the forefront of this evolution. While many have understandably walked away from Church life, Anne pursues ordination as integral to living out her deep commitment to collaborate with God on the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church.
About the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship
Since 2017, the Women’s Ordination Conference and the Durkin-Dierks Family have awarded nearly $24,000 to women and non-binary people to support their spiritual and academic paths toward ordination.
Support the Scholarship FundWho was Lucile Murray Durkin? Meet our past awardees
You must be logged in to post a comment.