The Notre Dame Office of Life and Human Dignity at the McGrath Institute for Church Life welcomes Gloria Purvis as its inaugural pastoral fellow, a new role designed to enhance the impact of pastoral leaders in life of the Church, particularly around timely and pressing issues like racial justice.
Purvis will partner with the office through July to enact a truly Catholic response to the sin of racism. This will include developing resources for the Teaching Human Dignity series, a free collection of lesson plans and other teaching materials for use in the classroom; creating an online course addressing the theology of racial justice to be offered through the McGrath Institute; offering two campus events for Notre Dame and the local community; and facilitating a workshop series for pastoral leaders with the goal of equipping them for dialogue and engagement on issues of racial justice.
“The impetus for our collaboration with Gloria came about through all of the events of the past 18 months,” said Jessica Keating, program director of the Notre Dame Office of Life and Human Dignity. “Coming to a particular point of tension in the murder of George Floyd and taken up in our spring 2021 webinar series, Conversations That Matter, we seek to really think about how the Church can address issues of systemic racism and train pastoral ministers to respond and learn techniques needed to thoughtfully engage in these difficult conversations and to enact community change.”
Purvis is a graduate of Cornell University and worked for nearly two decades in the mortgage industry before becoming a risk management director at a major financial services company. She served on the National Black Catholic Congress' Leadership Commission on Social Justice, and as an advisory board member on the Maryland Catholic Conference's Respect for Life Department as well as the Archdiocese of Washington's Pastoral Council. She taught natural family planning and helped prepare engaged couples for marriage as a member of a Pre-Cana team in the Archdiocese of Washington. She has appeared in various media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS Newshour, Catholic Answers Live and EWTN News Nightly, and hosted “Morning Glory,” an international radio show. She is Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic of the Year for 2020.
Currently, she is a full-time stay-at-home mother and a consultant for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Religious Liberty. Purvis is the creator and host of the EWTN TV series “Authentically Free at Last,” which deals with the modern challenges to the expression and understanding of authentic human freedom. For the past six months, Purvis has been collaborating with America Media on "The Gloria Purvis Podcast," which has provided important commentary on the life of the Catholic Church in the United States. She is dedicated to promoting the sanctity of human life, marriage and the dignity of the human person.
To learn more about the Notre Dame Office of Life and Human Dignity, visit mcgrath.nd.edu/life.
Contact: Brett Robinson, director of communications, 574-631-6109, brobins6@nd.edu
Originally published by at mcgrath.nd.edu on Oct. 13.