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New director of Office of Social Concerns hopes to give life to ‘Church’s mission of concern’

Genevieve Mougey is the new director of the Archdiocese of Washington's Office of Social Concerns. (Photo courtesy of Deirdre McQuade) 

Genevieve Mougey, director of the newly reopened Office of Social Concerns at the Archdiocese of Washington, said that within the office's work she hopes to bring “to complete fruition, the Church’s mission of concern.”

“It’s going to be about listening,” she said, adding that she will be working directly with parishes and local groups in order to serve the local archdiocese regarding social concerns.

The Office of Social Concerns, under the Secretariat of Pastoral Ministry, will bring together the whole picture of the archdiocese’s work with promoting social justice issues, including the dignity of human life in all its stages. Working closely with the Office of Life Issues and the Office of Special Needs, as well as collaborating with Catholic Charities, the Office of Social Concerns will also assist parishes and lay groups with support for those ministries involving human dignity, social justice and charitable outreach.

Before coming to the Archdiocese of Washington, Mougey was originally from Nebraska. She spent her undergraduate years at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, where she was involved in ministry and introduced to the Benedictine spirituality, which she said has since been a “stronghold and facet” in her faith.

Returning to Nebraska after graduation, she spent time working at a parish and then in campus ministry at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. There, she said she “began to delve into the social concerns of the Church.”

Mougey then received her master’s of divinity from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota – another Benedictine school. She said there she experienced the great connection and continuity of tradition that she had at University of Mary. For her pastoral education clinical, Mougey moved to Phoenix, Arizona to work with Interfaith Worker Justice, where she was “looking at worker rights issues, and the history of the Catholic Church’s presence with unions.”

There, Mougey said she began to explore “where we find our challenges and our sources of hope.”

This experience specifically influenced her work around “worker rights and worker justice and how that affects how we talk about immigration,” she said.

Mougey said her later work specifically as associate director at the U.S. Catholic Mission Association deepened her understanding of living out her Catholic faith.

“It gave me a really great language of talking about baptismal identity, call and vocation in a way that integrated that understanding across the board,” she said. “I think that it’s really important as Christians and as Catholics that we go out to do work in our community and that we understand that we’re doing that work because of our baptismal identity and our mission.”

Working in various other positions with organizations such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Bread for the World, Mougey said her personal vocation and journey has been “all about discernment.”

“And it’s all about being of service,” she said. 

A member of St. Teresa of Avila Parish in Washington, D.C., Mougey said her pastor, Msgr. Ray East, has been a great mentor, friend and colleague in her work.

The vision of social concern she hopes to bring to the office is distinguishing and combining an understanding of both social justice and charity, she said.

“These are two things (social justice and charity) that work in tandem together,” Mougey said. “They boost our understanding of how we participate in God’s creative energies and forces together.

“It’s beautiful that the office folds both of these understandings in our Church together and it forms what we understand as social concerns,” she said.

Working closely with Catholic Charities, the Office of Social Concerns most recently helped set up a virtual food drive during Holy Week, helping address the increasing issue of food insecurity that many face in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to supporting the needs of the parishes within the archdiocese, the Office of Social Concerns will work with groups of lay people and assist in their ministries that help address issues such as bringing Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si' to life.

“The wheels have already been moving by a very empowered laity,” she said. “We’re all baptized as priest, prophet and king… coming into this, (I’m) seeing people living out their baptismal call.”

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