St. John\u2019s University<\/a>,\u00a0received emails from the\u00a0Vatican\u00a0in the past\u00a0because of her\u00a0work\u00a0with\u00a0church\u00a0officials\u00a0on social justice issues,\u00a0this email came a surprise for two reasons; 1)\u00a0It\u00a0contained\u00a0a letter\u00a0informing her that Pope Leo XIV had appointed her to\u00a0the Dicastery\u00a0for Promoting Integral Human Development,\u00a0and\u00a02) The letter was written\u00a0in\u00a0Latin.\u00a0<\/p>\nLuckily for Clark,\u00a0the email also\u00a0contained\u00a0an\u00a0English translation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clark, who\u00a0said she was \u201cdeeply honored and humbled\u201d by her appointment,\u00a0is one of\u00a011 new members\u00a0of the dicastery, including\u00a0four Americans,\u00a0whose appointments\u00a0were announced\u00a0March 30.\u00a0Members serve\u00a0five-year\u00a0terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u00a0joins\u00a0fellow Americans\u00a0Father Daniel Groody, vice president and associate provost for undergraduate education at the University of Notre Dame; Dylan Corbett,\u00a0executive director of the Hope Border Institute in Texas; and L\u00e9ocadie Wabo\u00a0Lushombo, a professor of ethical theology at\u00a0Santa Clara University in California,\u00a0on the panel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Established by Pope Francis in 2016, the dicastery\u00a0is\u00a0tasked with promoting\u00a0the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church\u00a0and its areas of concentration include immigration, the\u00a0environment,\u00a0and human rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Clark, the appointment is a chance to continue\u00a0working\u00a0in areas that she has\u00a0focused on in the past.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal is to be of service to the people of God. What I hope I am able to do is the same thing I have done\u00a0\u2014\u00a0to lift up the voices of those\u00a0living, to use Pope Francis\u2019 language, on the periphery so that not just their basic needs are met, but that they are heard and\u00a0taken\u00a0seriously,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Clark, a parishioner of St. Rose of Lima Church in Rockaway Beach.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2022, she worked with the\u00a0Dicastery on\u00a0Human\u00a0Development\u00a0on\u00a0a\u00a0migration and refugee\u00a0project, traveling\u00a0around the U.S. to interview\u00a0day laborers, migrants,\u00a0and\u00a0sex trafficking survivors\u00a0as well as people who collect bottles and cans on the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Folks on the peripheries of society\u00a0have a lot to teach us, Clark said.\u00a0\u201cIt was in a conversation I had\u00a0with\u00a0a recycler from Brooklyn\u00a0that I heard the best description of integral ecology,\u201d she recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clark, who holds a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from Boston University,\u00a0worked\u00a0as an advisor\u00a0for\u00a0the Holy See\u2019s Mission to the United Nations\u00a0and served as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops\u2019\u00a0Committee on\u00a0Domestic Justice and Human Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Promoting human dignity was engrained in her at\u00a0an early age. She recalled growing up in Babylon, Long Island, \u201cwith a copy of the Catholic Worker newspaper on my grandparent\u2019s coffee table and hearing discussions on what it meant to treat the poor with dignity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her grandparents, John and Carol Clark, and her parents, Charles and Lisa Clark, had\u00a0a profound influence\u00a0on her\u00a0life and her work, she said. The family regularly volunteered at food pantries and worked on social justice issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was brought up in a family where the expectation was\u00a0modeled for me by my grandparents and parents and that was that our faith should touch every aspect of our lives. This\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0something you do just on Sundays. You\u00a0practice what you preach in a real sense,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite her earlier work with the Vatican on social justice issues, Meghan Clark says she was surprised when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-195852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Despite her earlier work with the Vatican on social justice issues, Meghan Clark says she was surprised when she learned of her appointment to the dicastery. \u201cI did not know that I was being considered for this role,\u201d she adds. (Photo: Courtesy of Meghan Clark)<\/p>\n