Two consecrated individuals who have served in the Diocese of Jackson have been elected to national leadership positions in their orders. Sister Maureen Delaney, SNJM, and Father Michael Barth, ST, will act as provincial and superior general respectively.
Sister Delaney is one of five sisters who will become the new Province Leadership Team for the Sisters of the Holy Names U.S.-Ontario Province beginning in January 2016. Joining Sister Delaney (who will serve as Provincial) are Mary Breiling, Guadalupe Guajardo, Margaret Kennedy and Mary Rita Rohde.
The Leadership Team serves a five-year term, leading a religious community that includes 17 Mission Centres across the United States and Ontario, Canada. Sister Delaney, who is the founder and executive director of the Tutwiler Community Education Center, has been developing education, recreation and enrichment programs and activities for children, teens and adults in a poor rural area of Mississippi for the past 28 years. She announced earlier this year that she will retire from that position. The center is currently in the midst of a search for a new director.
The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (SNJM) is an international congregation of Catholic Sisters, associates and lay consecrated who are dedicated to the full development of the human person through education, social justice, contemplation and the arts. Holy Names Sisters work to heal and repair the world by engaging in education, arts and culture, social service, advocacy, social justice and systemic change.
Father Michael Barth, ST, has been elected Superior General of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity (Trinity Missions). Father Barth served for many years as the pastor of Camden Sacred Heart Parish in the Diocese of Jackson. His election came at his religious congregation’s fifteenth General Chapter, held in Fort Mitchell, Alabama. Father Barth, ordained in 1979 and 63 years old, is a native of Berwick, Pennsylvania. In his first four-year term, Father Mike will be assisted by Rev. Jesús Ramírez, ST, of Guadalajara, México, who was elected his congregation’s Vicar General.
Among other actions taken by the General Chapter was a statement urging the passage of a comprehensive and humane immigration reform bill in the United States. In reference to statements made by the bishops of the United States, the document calls upon federal and state governments to recognize both the moral and human rights of people to migrate for political, economic, and religious reasons.
“We ask others, including religious and political leaders to join us in working together to bring about justice for our immigrant brothers and sisters,” Father Barth said.
The Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity are a religious congregation founded in Holy Trinity, Alabama, in 1929, by Rev. Thomas Judge.
Sacred Heart Parish in Camden and Holy Rosary Indian Mission in Tucker, are two of 30 Trinity Missions found in 11 dioceses in the United States and Puerto Rico, and eight dioceses in México, Colombia, and Costa Rica.