Mission Focused By S. Mary Ann Flannery
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scrappy ball player in high school, S. Karen Elliott, C.PP.S., director of Mission Integration at Mount St. Joseph University, approaches every challenge the same way she played softball: sliding toward the base, head first! She gives her all. Everything. Organizing a prayer group for athletes, creating a worship service for an event, counseling a struggling student, walking with a questioning faculty member, Elliott is constantly making the effort to help others find God in their lives and score some coveted points in happiness. Born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, Elliott joined the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Dayton after high school. She was accepted into the Novitiate in 1980 and participated in an intercommunity program in which novices shared classes and recreational activities with several communities. This gave her an S. Karen Elliott (second row, center) has made multiple pilgrimages to Emmitsburg, Maryland, with Mount St. Joseph University faculty and staff. introduction to the Sisters of Charity with whom she would later work. But Later, Elliott became youth minister at St. Michael’s years earlier she had taken note of her and began working on her master’s degree in theology at father’s respect for the Sisters of Charity who ministered at Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton when his twin sons were St. Michael’s University in Vermont. While serving in Findlay, Elliott founded Hope House for homeless women born prematurely. which just celebrated 30 years of existence in the community. “Together the babies weighed 5 pounds and were not “I loved working with the Sisters in Findlay,” Elliott said, given much of a chance to live,” she said. “But, S. Myra James “their charism of charity had rubbed off on me and I was Bradley, administrator of the hospital, prayed with my parents comfortable working with them.” in the chapel during those anxious days and she even baptized Elliott accompanied S. Barbara Davis to Toledo accepting one of the babies and administered confirmation.” Elliott a position as campus minister at Mercy College of Northwest remembers her father always recalling the kind pastoral effort Ohio where S. Barbara was an administrator. She felt strongly S. Myra James made on behalf of the newborn Elliott boys the call to continue her education in theology and scripture who survived the trauma. The impression of this memory of and began work on a Doctor of Ministry degree from Barry the Sisters of Charity was not lost on Elliott. University in Miami, Florida, completing it in 2004. Elliott After earning a bachelor’s degree in education from became an Associate in Mission with the Sisters of Charity Wright State University in Dayton, Elliott began her teaching in 2013 following the Vatican investigation of American career at Lakota High School in West Chester, Ohio followed Sisters. “I was invited to join an SC group addressing the by two elementary schools and finally St. Michael’s School in investigation and it convinced me that I had to be part of Findlay, Ohio, which deepened her connection to the Sisters the mission of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She stood up to the of Charity who administered and staffed the school. 18
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