Dr. Olga Lucía Villar was appointed executive director of the Southeast Pastoral Institute (SEPI) in November 2021. She is the first lay leader and woman to be appointed to the top position of the Miami-based organization.
SEPI, which was founded in 1979, provides education and pastoral services to Hispanic Catholics in 30 dioceses across nine states in the southeastern United States. The bishops of these member dioceses govern SEPI and appointed Villar to the position.
The collaboration between Catholic Extension Society and SEPI over the years has been strong and mutually beneficial. SEPI’s region covers 15 Extension dioceses, and the organization shares Catholic Extension Society’s goals to develop leaders, form young Catholics and animate the Church at the grassroots level, especially among marginalized populations.
From the beginning, SEPI’s mission has been to form lay leaders in the Church. So, becoming a lay-led organization was a natural progression. “I feel honored to be the first one to make this transition. It’s like coming of age,” said Villar.
She steps into SEPI’s executive leadership position with many aspirations, aiming to empower Catholics to be well formed in their faith and ready to lead in their communities. She plans to focus on the Church’s youth. Villar remembers being a teenager searching for mentorship and inspiration in her faith, which she found through SEPI.
She explained,
Empowering young people is where my passion is at this moment. It’s about going back to see myself as a 14-year-old, 18-year-old or 20-plus and connecting with those young people that I see across the Southeast.”
Villar plans to carry on the mission that SEPI initiated more than four decades ago by its founders, the Piarist Fathers. This religious congregation of men continues to inspire her.
In addition to working with youth and forming lay leaders in southeastern dioceses, Villar is spearheading a multi-diocesan program—supported by Catholic Extension Society—that will help form many new Spanish-speaking deacons. Additionally, she and Catholic Extension Society continue to collaborate on a trauma recovery and healing program for 700 families and children in central Mississippi who were separated or impacted by the largest immigration raid in U.S. history in 2019.
Prepared for leadership with Extension support
Villar is well equipped to address the diverse needs of the dioceses SEPI serves. She has intermittently taught courses at SEPI for 22 years, and she has also been prepared for leadership with help from Catholic Extension Society.
Villar was first introduced to Catholic Extension Society in 2012 when she began as the director of Hispanic ministry in the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama. She had great success in this ministry, particularly in engaging Catholics who had been disconnected from the Church. Her position was created and funded by Catholic Extension Society donors.
She says that apart from just funding her salary, Catholic Extension Society gave her the opportunity to grow as a leader through education and dialogue with other leaders who, like her, were funded by Catholic Extension Society.
“I realized that I needed to have more dialogue between academics and pastoral ministry to be able to enrich my experience and be able to pass it on in a better way,” Villar said. “That was given to me by Catholic Extension Society.”
After attending a summer education program in Hispanic ministry at Boston College, a program Catholic Extension Society invited her to participate in, Villar understood how crucial an advanced, higher-education experience could be for her ministry.
She went on to earn her doctorate in Hispanic pastoral ministry in 2016 from Barry University in Miami Shores, writing her thesis on the same faith communities she was serving in Alabama at the time.
Throughout her time in Alabama, Villar also grew professionally through regular convenings of leaders in Hispanic ministry hosted by Catholic Extension Society. She deeply appreciated the enriching opportunity of getting to know other leaders who were ministering throughout the country.
“It was about making sure that I listen to different voices throughout the country, because it is important,” Villar said. “Catholic Extension Society empowered me in that way.”
During those formative years as an Extension-sponsored leader, she met colleagues she refers to as some of the closest people with whom she journeys in the Church. Getting to see all the “amazing people” in Catholic Extension Society’s various leadership initiatives reinforces in her the importance of finding leaders for SEPI who have been transformed through their own experiences making an impact in their faith communities.
She concluded,
Once you join the Catholic Extension Society family, you want more people to be involved in whatever way they can be involved. Each person is touching several others and making an impact on others.”
This article appears in Extension magazine‘s spring 2022 edition. Support our mission to receive the next print edition of the magazine.
