A Nov. 1 annual awards and fundraising dinner for the organization SOAR! (Support Our Aging Religious) honored several local professionals and volunteers described as “exemplary models of faith in our world.”
James D. Bishop, Esq., director of the Catholic Charities Legal Network for The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, was honored with the Good Samaritan Award; Kerry Alys Robinson, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, was the Saint Katharine Drexel Award honoree; and spouses Liz McCloskey and Peter Leibold were honored for their long history as community leaders with the Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Award.
In accepting his award, Bishop said that as others before him have noted in being honored, “I am proud to be a Catholic.” He explained that the namesake of the Good Samaritan Award, the late Father Bob Brown, of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, was known for his commitment to serve the poor and marginalized. “He was known for a gentle approach to anyone he served.” Father Brown was a longtime SOAR! board member.
“The lesson Jesus teaches us in the parable of the Good Samaritan… is for us to realize who are our neighbors. The Samaritan would have been hated, marginalized and stripped naked” by the dominant society, Bishop said. “’Yet the Samaritan shows the unbounded love of God and each person’s duty to show unbounded love.”
“Our neighbors include those who are poor, marginalized and stripped naked in our society,” Bishop said. “Father Bob Brown as a priest exemplified the love of God and the Good Samaritan while serving as a priest in Philadelphia,” where he established group homes for troubled teens. “SOAR!, in its work to raise funds and provide grants to help our Catholic religious congregations in the United States care for the elderly, infirm religious also exemplifies the undying love of God and the Good Samaritan.”
Bishop has headed the Catholic Charities Legal Network for nearly 40 years. It provides legal services for a range of civil law needs for low-income people, linking them to volunteer pro-bono attorneys.
Robinson became president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA in August 2023 after heading the Leadership Roundtable. The Alexandria, Virginia-based network includes 168 diocesan Catholic Charities agencies.
In her remarks, she said it was humbling to be honored along with her fellow award recipients. She noted that as a young adult she worked for FADICA, a Catholic philanthropic network, when its director, Frank Butler, was among those creating SOAR! as “a matter of moral urgency.” Robinson called out several of the religious women who have been instrumental in her life, adding that “we all have people in our lives” like those sisters, including her Confirmation sponsor and her spiritual director when she was a college student.
“These women formed me deeply in Catholic social teaching,” Robinson said.
“We all have those people in our lives for whom our gratitude knows no bounds. Without them we would not be the people we are today. I thank God for SOAR!, for being there to support our aging religious after they have given so much to so many over the whole course of their lives,” she concluded.
McCloskey and Leibold have been involved in a range of charitable and faith-based activities, some together and some separately. Currently parishioners at Holy Trinity Parish in Georgetown, their work has extended from serving as U.S. Senate staffers, working on health care and civil rights legislation, to her recent role as a theology teacher at Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School in Takoma Park, Maryland and his just-concluded stint as executive vice president of Ascension, one of the nation’s largest Catholic health care systems.
They were honored with an award named for Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first U.S.-born person to be canonized a saint. The founder of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, the first community for religious women established in the United States, she also was known for establishing some of the nation’s first Catholic schools.
McCloskey said she got “teary eyed” when she was notified of the honor. She also noted the influence in her life of a “plucky” religious woman and a Jesuit uncle, who was well cared for at a Jesuit retirement home. “Would that every plucky aging religious live their final years treated with that kind of dignity and in that comfort,” she said.
Leibold joked that he was surprised to be honored along with his wife, saying she is “universally acknowledged” as a solid “first round” pick, but described himself as a “late, second-rounder on a good day.” Instead, he said, he thinks a different Leibold deserves the award, his mom, Nora Leibold. “She has totally internalized the lessons passed on to her by the Sacred Heart sisters,” he said. “She reminds me of the sisters who have been such an amazing influence on me and who lived out their faith through serving Catholic health care. Mom introduced me to SOAR! decades ago – and I do mean decades ago.”
He went on to credit the sisters he has known through working in Catholic health care organizations. “I have learned so much about what it really means to serve from them,” he said.
SOAR! was formed in 1986 following reporting by the Wall Street Journal on the then-$2 billion gap between the available funding to support aging religious women and what it would take to adequately meet their needs. Among national responses to that need, SOAR! was created to raise funds for Catholic religious congregations to meet immediate needs of their retired and infirm members, as well as to educate the public about those needs and develop a network of supporters.
Since then, SOAR! has provided millions of dollars in grants to religious orders for a wide range of needs. The 97 recipients in 2024 received an average grant of $31,677, for a total of more than $3 million. Typical projects covered by the grants include building upgrades such as automatic doors or a call bell system; lift chairs, wheelchair ramps, accessible vans, air conditioning and building renovations.
