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Chapter One

“… I Would Get Down on My Knees and Pray”

It was in Cambodia that I saw it, a crucifix like so many around the world, but with one major difference — Christ was missing one leg. For sale at the Jesuit Refugee Services Peace Café, it was made by victims of land mines, many of whom are missing a limb. It was touching to see how they claimed Christ, His suffering and His triumph, for their own.

Earlier that day I had visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, one of the mass graves monuments to the horrific killings that occurred here in the 1970s. There I had looked at a majestic tree, whose shade was welcoming in the intense heat. A sign on it read, “Killing tree against which executioners beat children.”

It was overwhelming.

How had God prepared the path that brought me here, that made me confront such evil, such injustice?

I thought back to an uncommonly low-key afternoon in the dean’s office of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame two years earlier. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and I was looking forward to having our two sons home for the holidays.

I returned a phone call to Bishop George Thomas of Helena, Montana, who was chairing the search committee for the CEO-President of Catholic Relief Services (CRS). I had just finished my second three-year term as a board member, and I was honored to have been invited to be part of this committee dedicated to finding the right person to head the official international humanitarian organization of the Catholic community in the United States. I had missed the committee’s first conference call and was eager to catch up with Bishop Thomas on what had transpired at their meeting.

The mission of CRS, which was founded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is to act on the good news of the Gospel by serving the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world on the basis of need, and not creed. It operates in approximately one hundred countries and reaches out to 100 million people. Its programs include humanitarian relief, food aid, health, water, sanitation, education, livelihood, and peace-building. My six years on the board had opened my eyes to the suffering in the world and the effective solutions brought about by the deeply committed CRS staff.

I reached Bishop Thomas in his car with his mother on their way to join family for Thanksgiving. We exchanged courtesies, and then I asked my question about the committee meeting. “Well,” Bishop Thomas replied, “we were actually glad you were absent because we talked about you. We would like you to be a candidate for the position.”

I don’t know whether I laughed out loud, but I know I laughed inside. “You must be kidding,” I said. “I have no depth in international development.” Honestly, I could not then name all the countries in Africa, nor the capitals of those I did know, and definitely not the political, ethnic, religious, cultural, or economic complexities of the countries where CRS worked.

“Now, Bishop Thomas, you know as much about international relief and development as I do. What would you do if the committee asked you to be a candidate?” I asked in a joking way. His answer changed my life: “I would get down on my knees and pray.”

Bishop Thomas was serious. He made clear this was not an offer, that other candidates would be considered, some working for CRS.

“You would be rigorously reviewed in the same way that every candidate would be. We are asking you to be open, to not say ‘no’ at this point, to let the process unfold and let the Holy Spirit guide you. Could you do that for us?”

I promised an answer after the long holiday weekend.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite celebrations, truly a time of giving thanks, of acknowledging how much God has blessed us by giving us each other. My husband David and our two sons, Ryan (then twenty-six and a third-year medical student) and Justin (twenty-three and a graduate student in theology), do little other than eat and relax. We hang out together, take in a few movies and set our minds toward Advent and Christmas. I thought that this period of calm and the heightened awareness of love and blessings would be a good time to pray and give Bishop Thomas’s question its proper attention.

My assumption was that I could not be and should not be the person to fill this position. I knew enough to know what I didn’t know, and I did not think the well-being and lives of CRS beneficiaries should be in my hands.

Beyond the reports presented at board meetings and the trips I had taken to learn about CRS programming in various countries — India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Afghanistan — I had absolutely no formal education or experience in this highly complex field. Each sector of work and each country CRS serves must fill tomes of analysis, engage the study and imagination of thousands of experts, and constitute the work of numerous government and nonprofit institutions. Emergencies call for quick decisions and incisive actions. It was clear to me that I had little to offer and would not be a value-added proposition.

Saying “yes” to a candidacy is different from saying “yes” to a job. But even doing that was hard. Because I am of Chinese ancestry and a woman, I am often asked to be a candidate in searches — there are significant pressures on committees and consultants to include minority and female candidates in all searches, particularly for executive officer positions. Some good has resulted from this requirement as we have seen more qualified candidates from nontraditional pools gain visibility and consideration. I support this. However, I do not consent to letting myself be placed on such lists.

Saying “yes” would also open me up to the possibility of making the type of move I had undertaken only twice up to that point in my life — first when I left Hong Kong for the United States in 1972, and second when I left Purdue University after twenty-three years to come to Notre Dame. That had been over fourteen years ago.

I don’t move around a lot. I flourish in communities where there are deep relationships. At Purdue and Notre Dame, I always felt that the next best thing was not something or someplace else, but just the next day of work with the people and for the mission I had chosen to serve. Leaving Purdue for Notre Dame took a full year of grieving. Once that was over, I was sure the campus in South Bend, Indiana, was where God intended me to spend the rest of my career, the rest of my life. David and I had already purchased a lot for our final resting place in Cedar Grove, the cemetery in the middle of campus. This was not macabre for the Notre Dame community: it is a privilege many people seek.

So, it would not be right for me to be on the candidate list: it would be a false representation of my interest, and it could hold back the search committee’s effort to identify truly viable diversity candidates. But I felt that I owed CRS and the committee the obedience they asked of me, to not say “no.” In my years on the board, I had come to love CRS, and I had the utmost respect and affection for the individuals on the committee. It was hard to refuse them.

That brought up another issue. Even though I knew I would not qualify and did not think the committee would seriously consider me, it would be humbling to be turned down. I also knew that such information, as much as it is meant to be confidential, would be known by others. So not only would I fail, I would fail with people knowing! I could devote a whole book to the concept of “losing face” in the Chinese culture, but suffice it to say that the combination of pride and the fear of embarrassment was enough to make me recoil from the thought of undergoing an evaluation only to be found deficient.

It was pride, and I knew what to do about that: pray, pray, pray, and pray. Pray to the point where I can say: it is okay, I can handle this; this is a short embarrassment, and I will get over it in days. I may feel flushed in my face; I may be down for a day, but I can handle this. Besides, it is good at my age, no longer at the point where people’s opinion should matter, to eat humble pie. My friends would be there for me. So I can take this on for Bishop Thomas and CRS.

Peace achieved: I gave my answer to Bishop Thomas the next week. Yes, I would be a candidate.