Weaving Faith and Service: S. Cj Willie’s Golden Jubilee

“Be diligent in serving the poor. Love the poor, honor them, my children, as you would honor Christ Himself.”

St. Louise de Marillac

By S. Patricia Wittberg

While serving as an international consultant, S. Cj Willie led teacher-training workshops in the Dominican Republic.

The 50th anniversary of a life choice – whether a marriage, a career, or religious life – can move us to pause and think back over the years. Often we can see God’s providence, like a golden thread, weaving through the chance meetings, the setbacks and challenges, and the unlooked-for opportunities that led us to where we are today.

S. Caroljean (Cj) Willie’s 50 years as a Sister of Charity show a consistent thread of God’s leading and presence in her many and varied ministries. After graduating from Edgecliff College, she served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in St. Lucia, an island nation in the Caribbean. On returning, she accepted a position at St. Joseph’s Orphanage, where she became acquainted with Sisters Rose Martin Morand, Agnes Loretto Ivory, Barbara Padilla and Cookie Crowley. Inspired by these Sisters and their work, she entered the Community in 1975. As a second year novice, she volunteered at St. Martin de Porres School in Lincoln Heights, and then taught there full time for two years.

When the school closed, a new opportunity opened up. The Bishop of St. Lucia invited S. Cj to return there, to teach at the Senior Secondary School and help develop a teacher training program. “Until that time,” she says, “anyone who had simply completed high school could become a teacher, without any additional training.” S. Cj provided workshops throughout the island for both elementary and secondary teachers, while herself teaching English, Spanish, and Teacher Education in the senior secondary school.

In 1981, S. Cj returned to Cincinnati to prepare for Final Vows and finish her master’s degree in education at Xavier University, while also teaching at Mother of Sorrows School. The professor in her class on teaching reading and critical thinking influenced her many ministries in all the years to come. “Hers were the best courses I ever had,” she says. “I still use their exercises and ideas in the workshops I give today, at all levels.” After graduating, she taught in the university’s reading department for several years during the summer months.

Discerning her next ministry, S. Cj felt called to teach in a school where the pupils were in most need. At the invitation of S. Catherine McCarthy, she taught Haitian and Hispanic students for four years in Miami. In 1989, she became the principal of Hope Rural School in Indiantown, Florida, where 92 percent of the students were immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.

S. Cj’s eyes light up when she talks about Hope Rural School. When she first arrived, the school had only kindergarten and grades one through four. By the time she left, grades five and six had been added. The reputation of the school’s educational program and its success in involving the parents spread far and wide; more than 800 visitors came each year to learn how the school functioned. S. Cj visited every child’s home to get to know the families, and established a school garden that the parents and children tended together. Instead of having a single PTA meeting in which everything had to be translated back and forth between English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Kanjobal (a Mayan language), she and a Mayan staff member gathered parents who all spoke the same language together in smaller meetings to learn more about the school, ask questions, and learn new skills themselves. Parental attendance at parent-teacher conferences averaged between 98-100 percent.

S. Cj left Hope Rural School in 1997 to finish her doctorate in multicultural education. She felt strongly that God was calling her to foster an understanding of the value of cultural diversity. Upon the completion of her Ph.D., she spent three years as multicultural education coordinator for the Diocese of Orlando, and another seven years as an international consultant giving workshops on cultural diversity to religious congregations, hospitals, and educational institutions. Since the Diocese of Orlando had a sister diocese relationship with a diocese in the Dominican Republic, S. Cj gave teacher-training workshops there during this time. She also served as an adjunct at Xavier University, Assumption University (Canada), St. Leo College and Lake Sumter Community College (both in Florida).

S. Cj Willie served as the official representative of the Sisters of Charity Federation to the United Nations for two four-year terms.

But God’s call is never predictable. In 2007, S. Cj was asked to be the official representative of the Sisters of Charity Federation to the United Nations. She would serve two four-year terms in this role. “The UN works through committees,” she says. “While the committees have no formal power, they do bring issues to the attention of country ambassadors. What we are doing there is bringing the voice of the people to the UN.” Every year, she sent a letter to the Federation communities she represented, asking them what issues they thought were the most important, and served on the committees that addressed those issues. During her time at the UN, she had the opportunity to visit all of the Federation congregations as well as many of their missions throughout the world. Along with the Federation director, she also attended the meetings of the international Vincentian family leaders.

As her second term at the UN was ending, S. Cj pondered what she was called to do next. She spent a sabbatical year in 2015, participating in a three-month program on cosmic spirituality at An’Tearseach in Ireland, followed by a month in Guatemala with S. Sarah Mulligan and then in Dominica with S. Mary Gallagher. In her previous trips to Africa and India, she had seen the devastating effects of environmental pollution and climate change on the people there. This, she felt, was the next ministry to which God was calling her.

In her role as program director at EarthConnection, S. Cj Willie hosts Girl Scouts and school groups, teaching them about care for the Earth.

In 2016, S. Cj began her current role as program director at EarthConnection (EC), the congregation’s environmental center in Cincinnati. The center hosts Girl Scouts and school groups, teaching them about care for the Earth, and presents an online lecture program in which speakers from all over the world share knowledge on environmental sustainability, bioregions, and Celtic spirituality. She also visits schools to offer teachers ideas on integrating sustainability into their current curricula and presents workshops to parishes.

In her role at EarthConnection, S. Cj participates in several local groups. She is part of the Cincinnati Archdiocese’s Care for Creation Task Force, Mount St. Joseph University’s Sustainability Committee, and the Ohio Sisters’ Justice Network. She co-chairs Faith Communities Go Green, an interfaith group, and serves on the program committee for the Earth and Spirit Center in Louisville, Kentucky. As part of the core committee of Sisters of Earth, an international group of women religious active in environmental efforts, she is currently planning their next in-person meeting to be held at Mount St. Joseph University in 2026.

S. Cj Willie has extensive experience internationally in the areas of microfinancing, teacher training, cultural diversity and sustainability.

But she hasn’t forgotten her love for multicultural education and sustainable development. Each year, she goes to East Africa to visit microfinancing projects there and offers workshops for teachers at both the elementary and secondary level. She has also given workshops during the summer months in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Dominica, St. Lucia, and Curacao, and continues to provide yearly intercultural training workshops for the Lay Mission Helpers program in Los Angeles, California.

Underlying all these varied ministries is S. Cj’s belief that religious life today is meant to be a sign to the world that we can have a better future if we all work for it. She has been inspired by the many religious congregations that she has lived with and worked with over the years, and she is especially proud to be part of the global vision lived out by our own Community and the other communities and organizations in the Vincentian Family.

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