Bishop Reilly has appointed Mrs. Engdahl director of the diocesan Office of Social Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. She is to start Aug. 6.

She wants to educate people about the rich resource of Catholic social teaching.

"It makes you proud to be a Catholic because you see your Church taking such a positive stand," she said. "It goes beyond our local parishes and our diocese. You see you are part of the universal Church.

"I think Catholic social teaching helps to guide us in our everyday lives as Catholics. It takes the ministry of Jesus 2,000 years ago and puts it in the context of today. If we’re saying ‘yes’ to Jesus in the year 2001, here are some ways we can do it."

Those ways are as diverse, as people are diverse, she said. She said she wants to offer a variety of options for participation, "so that people know that they are all called to be voices for justice" and can find ways to do it that fit their lifestyle.

The Social Justice office has been vacant since June 2000 when Rachelle Comtois left to work in the Boston Archdiocese.

"The life and ministry of Jesus is the reason for the office," Mrs. Engdahl told The Catholic Free Press this week. "I think I see the office as a way to work with other Catholics in responding to the social issues of our times."

She said as soon as she saw the job advertized, she wanted it; she had been praying about what she should do.

"You know it’s right when you feel passionate about it," she said.

Mrs. Engdahl and her husband, Charlie Engdahl, have two daughters, Kathleen, 6, and Elizabeth, 8. They are members of Christ the King Parish in Worcester, where she grew up, and where she has been a religious educator and presider and reader at children’s liturgies. They live in Rutland.

Mrs. Engdahl, an attorney, has been involved in the St. Thomas More Society for people in the legal profession, and volunteered at her daughters’ school, Venerini Academy in Worcester.

From 1997 until recently she was special assistant to the executive director of the Henry Lee Willis Community Center Inc., in Worcester, a multi-cultural service center. She provided legal advice, sought donations and grants, and promoted legislative advocacy, among other things. Her previous jobs were with the Worcester Housing Authority and as a lawyer in private practice and with the Worcester County district attorney’s office.

She said her experience as an attorney will help her in her new job; her access to and understanding of the legal system can help her ensure that people’s rights are not being violated.

Among her priorities for the social justice office are addressing homelessness, affordable housing, racism, immigration, and the death penalty, she said. She said she is pro-life from conception to natural death and will be glad to collaborate with the diocesan pro-life office on various life issues.

Rather than just talk about such problems, she wants to engage parishioners in hands-on action to address them, she said. She said she thinks that when people do such direct service, it brings about in them a commitment and conversion. Then they see their role in advocacy and become voices for justice.

"With rights come responsibilities in our Church," she said. "Living in a democracy, we have a voice." So people need to be educated about how to make their voices heard. She said her job will include sharing resources that parishes and schools need to respond with action.

The process of moving from direct service to advocacy to education involves hands, hearts, and heads, she said.

She said she and her husband and children engage in the Church’s social justice ministry as a family, doing such things as participating in the Walk for the Homeless and explaining homelessness to their daughters, or helping them "really get a feel for people in their community" by attending the holiday party at the Willis Center.

"We bring it back to Jesus," she said. "We just talk about remembering how Jesus made a special point of associating with the poor and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus wants us to love the poor and to be with them. It’s not just about giving money; it’s about giving ourselves."

Her own education about social justice has come from various sources, Mrs. Engdahl said.

She said her father, the late Jack O’Leary, probably had the most effect on her; he loved all kinds of people and did whatever he could for them.

"He’d drive us through the city so we could see how other kids lived," she said. And upon seeing a priest he didn’t know at the airport, he offered the clergyman a ride, she said. Her father taught her and her brother and sister about service to the community and Church, she said. And through his involvement in politics she saw that getting the right people into office would ensure that people were taken care of, she said.

Then a class with David O’Brien at Holy Cross College introduced her to Catholic social teaching and helped her see how the Church can help bring about social change, she said. Church, politics and service had come together for her in one big picture.

"I went to law school because I wanted to make a difference and I thought a legal education would give me the tools I needed to effect change," she said. Working for the district attorney’s office gave her an understanding about how difficult people’s lives are and that incarceration isn’t the answer for everything; rehabilitation and support can help a lot, she said.

The Willis Center had tremendous influence "on my understanding of the effect of economic and social structures on communities of color."

At Boston College a course with New Mexico author and theologian Megan McKenna "really helped me to understand the mission of the Church in terms of social justice, and identify the gifts that I had, to work to effect change," she said. "Megan didn’t start me where I was comfortable – she moved me right out."

New things are sometimes uncomfortable, Mrs. Engdahl said, "but we need to challenge ourselves to become our best selves, and our best selves are when ... we live in true community with one another."