Working for a Better World. Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo
in God, in her neighbor, and in herself.
When she began her freshman year at Purdue University, she had enough resources for only one year of study. A secure future was a dream and a goal. Here again the Church in the form of St. Thomas Aquinas Center at Purdue supplied a life-giving community for her. Purdue University was a godsend for Carolyn Woo, not the least because it brought David Bartkus, her eventual husband and partner in faith, into her life. Beyond the scholarships, education, leadership opportunities, mentoring, and friendships, Purdue became a physical, emotional, and spiritual home for her, David, and eventually their two children, Ryan and Justin.
After nearly twenty-five years at Purdue, Carolyn and her family pulled up stakes for Notre Dame, a move about mission, not ambition. She and David felt that the Holy Spirit was asking her to accept this invitation. Carolyn Woo served as Dean of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business for nearly fifteen years.
In her years as dean, Carolyn’s faith, vision of what a truly Catholic education entails, understanding of management, and mission-driven leadership moved the college steadily forward. During her last two years, Notre Dame’s undergraduate business education was ranked number one in the nation. Our Mendoza College of Business has continued to hold this designation each year since Carolyn Woo left for Catholic Relief Services. This continued success of the College is attributable to the structures she put in place and the gifted people she gathered and inspired.
Carolyn and her faculty repeatedly stressed to students that they were being educated to advance the common good or, better, to build God’s kingdom. So she recognized the Holy Spirit’s involvement in 2003 when CRS asked her to join its board, and when it appealed to her to leave Notre Dame effective January 2012. It was time for Carolyn to follow what she had been urging students to do — i.e., to use one’s blessings to better the lives of one’s neighbors. So in her late fifties Carolyn Woo surrendered to being uprooted again by the Holy Spirit, this time to lead the official international humanitarian organization of the Catholic community in the United States.
The God who beckoned awaited her in Baltimore. As Carolyn has come to realize, God has been there each step of the way. Though international development is not her expertise, CRS has five thousand amazing employees with extensive knowledge on which she relies. Just as she did here at Notre Dame, Carolyn Woo serves her new community with humility and a commitment to excellence. Even now, CRS is being strengthened by Carolyn Woo’s faith, her vision of what it is to be the bearer of the good news of the Gospel, her management expertise, and the examples of her diligence and persistence.
My friend is not just giving, though. She is constantly humbled by what she sees, by what she is learning with CRS, and she is deeply grateful for that. CRS’s gifted, selfless, and zealous colleagues teach her much about discipleship. She is awed. Joy and goodness abound in many places where needs are the greatest. The colossal and complex needs of our brothers and sisters around the world are teaching her to pray with even greater fervor: “Come, Holy Spirit”; and “Today is a workday, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Blessed Mother. We all have to show up.” My friend’s faith tells her that suffering does not make sense unless we believe that God is both part of it and on the other side of it. There is a manifest need in all of us for hope, sustenance, and human contact. As we share such gifts with our neighbors, we are at the intersections where miracles happen and angels are encountered.
In 1934, when I entered Notre Dame as a freshman, barely seventeen years old, I began praying, “Come, Holy Spirit,” and turning for help to Mary, Mother of us all, and Mother of Our Savior. I could stand near the statue of the poor shepherd girl, Bernadette, at our Grotto or gaze at Mary on the Dome. The Holy Spirit and Mary have never failed me.
Carolyn Woo began her college career young and feeling very much alone. With no one else to depend on, she regularly invited the Holy Spirit into her day. From her Notre Dame office in the Mendoza College of Business she could plainly see Mary atop the Golden Dome. Carolyn often turned to her there and at the Grotto for clarity and courage. Carolyn likes to say that mediocrity was no way to serve our Blessed Mother.
I can’t say enough about this good lady, Carolyn Woo; but, as I look out my window toward the Blessed Mother at the Golden Dome, I do pray that you meet my friend and the neighbors that we have around the world in the pages of her new book, Working for a Better World.
Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., was a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and served as the president of the University of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987. He passed away on February 26, 2015, at the age of 97, as this book was being prepared to go to press. Dr. Woo was able to visit Fr. Ted five days before his passing, and he offered her a blessing and reiterated the importance of serving the poor. The Gospel reading for his funeral Mass was from Matthew 25.
Part I
God Has Always Been There
Chapter One
“… I Would Get Down on My Knees and Pray”
It was in Cambodia that I saw it, a crucifix like so many around the world, but with one major difference — Christ was missing one leg. For sale at the Jesuit Refugee Services Peace Café, it was made by victims of land mines, many of whom are missing a limb. It was touching to see how they claimed Christ, His suffering and His triumph, for their own.
Earlier that day I had visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, one of the mass graves monuments to the horrific killings that occurred here in the 1970s. There I had looked at a majestic tree, whose shade was welcoming in the intense heat. A sign on it read, “Killing tree against which executioners beat children.”
It was overwhelming.
How had God prepared the path that brought me here, that made me confront such evil, such injustice?
I thought back to an uncommonly low-key afternoon in the dean’s office of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame two years earlier. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and I was looking forward to having our two sons home for the holidays.
I returned a phone call to Bishop George Thomas of Helena, Montana, who was chairing the search committee for the CEO-President of Catholic Relief Services (CRS). I had just finished my second three-year term as a board member, and I was honored to have been invited to be part of this committee dedicated to finding the right person to head the official international humanitarian organization of the Catholic community in the United States. I had missed the committee’s first conference call and was eager to catch up with Bishop Thomas on what had transpired at their meeting.
The mission of CRS, which was founded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is to act on the good news of the Gospel by serving the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world on the basis of need, and not creed. It operates in approximately one hundred countries and reaches out to 100 million people. Its programs include humanitarian relief, food aid, health, water, sanitation, education, livelihood, and peace-building. My six years on the board had opened my eyes to the suffering in the world and the effective solutions brought about by the deeply committed CRS staff.
I reached Bishop Thomas in his car with his mother on their way to join family for Thanksgiving. We exchanged courtesies, and then I asked my question about the committee meeting. “Well,” Bishop Thomas replied, “we were actually glad you were absent because we talked about you. We would like you to be a candidate for the position.”
I don’t know whether I laughed out loud, but I know I laughed inside. “You must be kidding,” I said. “I have no depth in international development.” Honestly, I could not then name all the countries in Africa, nor the capitals of those I did know, and definitely not the political, ethnic, religious, cultural, or economic complexities of the countries where CRS worked.
“Now, Bishop Thomas, you know as much about international relief and development as I do. What would you do if the committee asked you to be a candidate?” I asked in a joking