Our Stories

When Kathy first heard about the Leadership Formation Institute, she was not convinced it was meant for her.

The name alone gave her pause.

“I didn’t see myself as a leader,” she remembers. “As an introvert, I wasn’t sure I fit the personality I associated with leadership.”

Kathy had been Catholic all her life. She grew up going to Mass and learning the faith, drifted away from regular practice for a time in college, and eventually returned to the Church after meeting Paul, the man who would become her husband.

Over the years, her faith deepened. She prayed, raised their children in the faith, and gradually became more involved at the Cathedral of St. Andrew, a parish entrusted to the Paulist Fathers. She volunteered, joined the counting team, and served as a lector.

She was also praying for ways to become more involved.

So when she kept hearing about LFI, she began to wonder whether she should at least give it a try.

The Leadership Formation Institute is offered through the Catholic Information Center, also a ministry of the Paulist Fathers. Kathy and Paul joined the first LFI group in 2024–25.

Paul came to the experience from a somewhat different place. His faith life had already become more active, and he was deeply involved in parish life. But LFI gave the two of them something they had not expected: a new way of seeing the faith they shared as husband and wife.

During one session, participants were asked to talk about where they had seen their prayer and faith deepen.

Kathy spoke.

Paul listened.

“I was startled when I heard Kathy share how it was me and my faith that inspired her,” he says.

They had been married for more than 40 years. They had shared a home, raised a family, and practiced their faith together. Yet hearing Kathy say that aloud caught Paul by surprise.

During another LFI session, this one on engaging Catholics who had become disconnected from the Church, Kathy and Paul found themselves thinking about people they loved, including members of their own family. Others in the room had similar stories.

The concern stayed with them.

LFI invites participants to pay attention to needs they see and discern where the Holy Spirit may be asking them to respond. For Kathy and Paul, that concern eventually became the beginning of a new six-week experience called Made For More.

At first, it had a different name: You Are Loved.

The idea did not come together easily.

There was a point early in the process when the team became discouraged enough to wonder whether they should continue. The work was demanding, and the vision was still taking shape.

Kathy remembers sensing a clear conviction: do not give up.

So the team met again. They prayed, kept working, and received support and encouragement from the staff at the Catholic Information Center.

The project continued.

And somewhere along the way, Kathy found herself in a place she had not imagined when she first saw the words “Leadership Formation Institute.”

She was leading.

“Being in a leadership role and being out in front of others was outside my comfort zone,” she says.

What had changed was not her personality. Kathy still describes herself as an introvert. She had simply become more willing to step forward even when doing so felt uncomfortable.

Paul has watched that change from beside her.

“Kathy, my wife of 41 years, has grown so much,” he says. “She is a shy, reserved person, and I have seen her grow so much to the point where she has taken on the leadership of the Made For More program.”

Then he adds an image of his own.

“A beautiful rose blooming.”

The work has also given both of them a chance to see what happens when others are given room to speak honestly about faith, struggle, and the presence of God in their lives.

Paul remembers looking into the faces of people gathered around a table during Made For More: the tears, the stories, the accounts of healing, the moments when someone seemed to recognize God’s love in a new way.

A year earlier, Kathy had wondered whether LFI was really for someone like her.

Now she is leading something that did not exist before.

Kathy still calls herself an introvert. She just no longer assumes that means the answer is no.