St. Joseph Sr. Kathy Brazda, delivers the presidential keynote address during the 2025 Leadership Conference of Women Religious annual assembly in Atlanta, Georgia, Aug. 13, 2025. (GSR/Helga Leija)
by GSR Staff
Editor's note: Global Sisters Report is covering the annual assembly for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, this year held Aug. 12-15 in Atlanta, Georgia. Here, you can find regular updates and reflections from GSR staff.
Sr. Kathy Brazda's "Dread Is Not of God" spoke to my grief and hope
BY HELGA LEIJA
August 14, 12:50 p.m. ET
I almost didn't attend the LCWR assembly in Atlanta this year. The day before I was to leave, my former prioress, Esther Fangman — a Benedictine Sister of Mount St. Scholastica, a dear friend and mentor — died. She had been my rock through my transfer to monastic life, helping me weather storms that I could not have navigated alone.
In her honor, I came anyway, because she was a strong advocate for training and education for women. Today's presidential address by St. Joseph Sr. Kathy Brazda confirmed that decision. Her words, "Dread is not of God," were exactly what I needed to hear as I try to do my work with Global Sisters Report while carrying a relentless grief that is pressing to be acknowledged.
As a sister under 50, it's hard to put into words the fear and loss I feel when elders, leaders, and mentors die. These are the ones who have guided me, shaped me, and steadied my steps. As I see them go, I find myself asking: Who will be left to guide me if I am called to lead?
Brazda spoke of being diagnosed with cancer at the start of her first year in LCWR leadership. She recalled wondering, "How can I plan for a future when I don't know if I'll even be a part of it?" Yet in that uncertainty, she learned to receive — from her elders, from the LCWR leadership team, from her congregational leadership team.
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Her reality "reshaped" her leadership, she said. And my reality too, is being reshaped by loss. Death did not take Esther from us — it deepened the ways she will continue to shape my life and the community's future.
Brazda reminded us that the most significant leadership lessons don't come from workshops or retreats, but from lived experience, and from choosing to stay rooted in hope, even when the path ahead is unclear. Esther always told me: "When in doubt, always choose to love."
Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, Esther Fangman and Helga Leija, after watching the movie Conclave in 2024. (GSR/Helga Leija)
Sometimes it is unbearably hard, but those moments are the lessons that shape us most. Esther's life and death have been both the best and worst of times for me: joy and grief woven together. Brazda reminded us that to "bring to birth an alternate way of being in the world" requires entering wholeheartedly into both, making room for God to work through our vulnerability. In these days of loss, that is the only way I know how to live.
So, I offer my loss to God. And, as the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote, and Brazda quoted, my prayer is that I may "become a window through which God shines" — even now, with grief as my companion, and hope as my choice.
