CHICAGO — Jean Fedigan, founder of a nonprofit in the Diocese of Tucson, Ariz. that serves homeless and trafficked women, is the 2022-2023 recipient of Catholic Extension’s Lumen Christi Award.
The award, established in 1978, is the highest honor given by Catholic Extension and goes to people “who radiate and reveal the light of Christ present in the communities where they serve.”
Catholic Extension is a Chicago-based papal mission society that supports the work and ministries of U.S. mission dioceses.
Fedigan “continues a beautiful legacy of the Catholic people of Tucson, who have always understood that our faith comes alive when we go to the peripheries,” Father Jack Wall, president of Catholic Extension, said in announcing the award winner Sept. 22.
“It was no accident that Jean’s ministry to homeless women was born out of her parish, Our Mother of Sorrows, in Tucson, and was inspired by a Native American spiritual leader, Sister José Hobday,” he added.
The late Sr. Hobday, a Franciscan, was a Seneca tribal elder and a popular author, storyteller and lecturer on prayer and spirituality. In her talks, she would always remind her listeners that Jesus “wants everyone at the banquet.”
Fedigan founded the nonprofit Sister José Women’s Center in 2009 while she was still serving as chief nursing officer at the University of Arizona Medical Center. She named her nonprofit after Sister Hobday, who died in April that year at age 80.
The center is dedicated to the care of homeless and trafficked women living on the streets of Tucson.
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