Benedictine College to host free Mary L. Fellin Lecture April 26

Benedictine College will bring one of the Catholic Church’s most closely watched conversations to Atchison, with a free public lecture on women’s leadership, synodality and the new papacy set for O’Malley-McAllister Auditorium.

Kim Daniels, J.D., director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, will speak Sunday, April 26, at 7 p.m. Her lecture, titled Pope Leo, Synodality and Women’s Leadership in a Global Church, is free and open to the public.

The event lands at a moment when Catholics are still working through questions that reach far beyond Rome. Synodality has become a shorthand for participation, listening and shared decision-making in a church that has long been shaped by hierarchy. Women’s leadership sits at the center of that conversation, especially for communities like Atchison where church life, higher education and religious life overlap every day on the Benedictine campus and at Mount St. Scholastica.

Daniels brings that discussion to town with unusual policy and Vatican experience. Georgetown identifies her as a member of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication. She also served in the 2021-24 Synod on Synodality as an expert participant and coordinated one of the synod study groups focused on the Church’s mission in the digital environment.

The lecture series itself has deep roots in Atchison. The Mary L. Fellin Lecture was established in 1997 by the family of Sister Jo Ann Fellin to promote reflection and discussion through academic presentations by women. The first lecture was delivered by Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, and the 2025 event marked the 25th Mary L. Fellin Lecture. Last year’s speaker, Sister Judith Sutera, OSB, focused on Benedictine values of prayer, hospitality and humility.

Support for the series comes from the Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica Monastery through the Fellin Endowment Fund, tying the annual lecture to the monastery’s long support for liberal arts education. That connection fits Benedictine College’s own description of itself as a Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts, residential college dedicated to educating men and women within a community of faith and scholarship.

For Atchison County, the lecture is more than a campus date on the calendar. It is another chance for a local Catholic community to hear how global church debates are being framed by a scholar who has worked inside the institutions driving them. As Rome continues to weigh how the church should listen, govern and expand leadership, Benedictine is positioning Atchison as a place where those questions can be heard in public, in person and close to home.