The 2024 Awardees of the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship
The Women’s Ordination Conference and the Durkin-Dierks Family are happy to announce the awardees of the 2024 Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship:
Hannah Coley
Katie Dutton
Judith Twinobusingye
Katie Wojda
Please join us in celebrating the courage and resilience of Hannah, Katie, Judith, and Katie, 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!
Meet Our 2024 Awardees
Hannah Coley
Katie Dutton
Judith Twinobusingye
Katie Wojda
Hannah Coley
Hannah is a student, educator, and spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition and feels drawn to the callings and lives of folks such as the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador, Jean Donavan, the Berrigan Brothers, Dorothy Day, Sister Thea Bowman, Oscar Romero, and Simone Weil because of their enlivenment of Ignatian discernment. Her call to ordained life is impacted by such examples of intentional vocational response and Ignatian discernment, and her professional and ministerial life as a high school Theology educator, youth minister, high school campus minister, and community member has informed her practices as a facilitator of dialogue in complex spiritual, historical, and cultural contexts.
For Hannah, it is impossible to express her call to ordained ministry as a Catholic woman without speaking about the consecrated lives of women within various communities she has lived and worked. She served in Punta Gorda, Belize as a youth minister and retreat coordinator for schools in the Mayan villages in the southernmost district of Belize. These particular communities are led by lay catechists, including women catechists. Three years later, she was exposed to female leadership in the Church community in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Hannah lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation and worked in a Jesuit Catholic Lakota high school as a campus minister for five years. This was a sacred time in which the strength of her faith was tested as she confronted the devastating reality of a complicit and actively violent Catholic Church in the indigenous boarding school era.
Hannah’s call to ordained ministry is rooted in the belief that communities ordain their leaders through the cultivation of trustworthy relationships. She realizes the healing implication of leadership roles for disinherited people such as women in the Catholic Church, and feels a closeness to the Catholic Eucharist because of the Church’s brokenness and because of the imperfect hope she witnesses in the life, healing, and growth of the Church. Her call to ordained ministry is guided by her desire to understand herself within the Catholic Eucharist, before Christ in community, and within a Church that is in the midst of necessary social and historical reckoning.
Katie Dutton
Katie Dutton is currently pursuing a degree from St. Norbert College, where she is majoring in Theology and Sociology with a minor in Peace and Justice. On campus, she has been grateful for the opportunities to work with first year students to grow their leadership and faith, as well as to participate in alternative break service trips. Her upbringing provided her with unique opportunities to develop her voice, including active participation in her Catholic Parish, competition in Bible Quizzing, and exposure to a wide variety of theological convictions among her friends.
When she began at St. Norbert College, an introduction to theology course, coupled with a number of dynamic professors, made her see the possibilities of pursuing a future in ministry and theology. A recent trip to Montgomery, Alabama with her Black Theology class showed her firsthand the ways in which the Church has grown, but also how far it still must go in order to reconcile with the nation’s ongoing history of racial injustice. These opportunities showed her new avenues for her lifelong desire to use her faith to build bridges and heal wounds created by a misuse of religion by both institutions and individuals in power.
As she looks to the future, it brings Katie joy to see the opportunities available for her, but also the need for change in order that women not only be allowed a place in the Catholic Church, but also welcomed in a way that emphasizes their unique gifts and strengths. She has often encountered young people who have felt excluded or unwanted by the Church, and this divide lit a fire in her soul to emulate the work Jesus engaged in towards the recentering of marginalized voices in His time on earth.
As she discerns whether her future might include pursuing a career as a chaplain, a campus minister, or another position, what she knows for sure is that her soul is open to the workings of the Holy Spirit. She takes inspiration from the long history of action that the women of the Catholic Church have ignited, particularly Servant of God Dorothy Day, St. Joan of Arc, St. Bernadette, and Phoebe, a Biblical woman who followed her vocation as a Deacon. She is grateful to the Women’s Ordination Conference and the Durkin-Dierks family for this scholarship and for their ongoing support for women actively working towards change.
Judith Twinobusingye
Judith was born in Uganda and is currently a counselor with a post graduate diploma in clinical counseling. Living under traumatic circumstances, including having to drop out of school during the Rwandan genocide, sparked her desire to relieve the pain of those who suffer because of the actions of their fellow human beings.
Her activism has led her to confront injustices in church and society, focusing her work on promoting education for young people, supporting the elderly, and empowering former nuns. She offers counseling to those who face discrimination on the basis of their gender.
Her faith was shaped by her father, a catechist, and today she is pursuing further studies in theology to better understand how she might serve creation.
Katie Wojda
Katie Wojda is a first year Master of Divinity student at Loyola University in Chicago. She is so grateful to have received the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship this year. Katie first felt a call to the priesthood when she was in high school—a calling that was both painful and inspiring as she has always felt very strongly grounded in the Roman Catholic Church through her family and home parish.
Katie studied English literature and Spanish at the University of Portland in Oregon, and there she found that her roles in Campus Ministry and in the Moreau Center for Service and Justice continued to affirm her vocation to ministry. She is especially grateful for the Holy Cross order, and the faith and life mentor that she found in her supervisor, Tshombé Brown. As she wrestled with her belonging to a church that would not ordain her, it was people like Tshombé who encouraged her to remain passionate and curious about what the Roman Catholic Church could be for us all.
After college she did a year of service in the Jesuit Volunteers Corps in Chicago, working for Taller de José. Katie felt that the ministry of accompaniment lived out at Taller de José was perhaps the closest way she had ever participated in building the Kingdom of God on Earth. Her appreciation for women’s leadership, in lay ministries and in the Church, grew so much that year in Chicago. Katie would like to especially thank Brenda Rodriguez, her supervisor and mentor at Taller de José, for her constant support and belief in her work as a Compañera.
After her two years of teaching English in Sevilla, Spain, Katie is so excited to begin her studies at Loyola. As a woman and a member of the queer community, she cannot remain a Roman Catholic without doing her part in making the Church a place where everyone is truly welcome. She hopes that a better understanding of the history of the Church and its Sacraments will help her to be part of the community of change-makers in the Catholic world.
About the Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship
Since 2017, the Women’s Ordination Conference has awarded nearly $35,000 to women and non-binary leaders discerning their ministry.
Meet our past scholarship recipientsWho was Lucile Murray Durkin? Support the scholarship fund