The 2026 Columbus Catholic Women’s Conference, “Look to Him and Be Radiant” (Psalm 34:6), featured five speakers who reminded approximately 3,000 women to look to God – not to each other in comparison.
The conference, held at the Ohio Expo Center & State Fairgrounds on Saturday, Feb. 21, united women from in and outside of the Columbus diocese for a day of prayer, encouraging messages, Eucharistic Adoration and Mass.
This year’s speakers included Sister Mary Grace, S.V., a member of the Sisters of Life religious order; Mother Natalia of Christ the Bridegroom Monastery in northeast Ohio; Father John LoCoco, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and National Eucharistic Revival preacher; Meg Hunter-Kilmer, a worldwide speaker, author and campus minister at the University of Notre Dame; and Rachel Muha, founder of The Run The Race Club for inner-city children in Columbus’ west side.
Thirty-eight priests were present to hear confessions.
The conference was emceed by Jennifer Rice, a wife, mother and parishioner at Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church, who works as a clinical social worker in private practice. It was Rice’s third consecutive year as emcee.
St. Brendan the Navigator Church served as the conference host parish.
The one-day event included a 4 p.m. Mass of Anticipation for the First Sunday of Lent, celebrated by Bishop Earl Fernandes.
Concelebrants included Fathers David Johnstone, chaplain of the Columbus Catholic Women’s Conference and parochial vicar at Worthington St. Michael the Archangel Church; Tesfaye Petros Botachew, diocesan director of the Office for Multicultural Ministry; and Sam Severance, parochial vicar at St. Brendan the Navigator Church. Deacon Doug Saunders of St. Brendan assisted at Mass.
Mother Natalia opened a lineup of speakers with a message on striving for union with Christ as a “hot mess express.” The consecrated religious sister, who is part of the Byzantine Catholic Church, holds a degree in engineering physics from Colorado School of Mines.
She reminded women to strive for union with Christ, not simply to “not sin.” She stressed the importance of authentically striving for holiness.
Mother Natalia shared that when people visit her order’s monastery, they often note a sense of peace and joy. All the while, she said, common day-to-day struggles ensue.
She, too, battles typical human emotions and reactions, including anger that a sister “didn’t buy more bananas that I don’t even want to look at her.”
In the process of being purified, she added, people can see the religious striving for the Lord.
“We think that we need to be good examples for others by having our act together, but we can be good examples by letting them see that we’re a dumper fire and are still striving for holiness and are still inviting the Lord into that,” she affirmed. “That’s the example we need to show.”
Mother Natalia serves as a spiritual mother to women, many of whom are biological mothers. She noted that several are paralyzed by a fear of wounding their children.
Not wanting to cause pain, “this is a good desire,” she affirmed, “but what I tell these moms is, you’re going to wound your kids, and you’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to have to say you’re sorry.
“Your kids don’t need to learn from you what it looks like to be a sinless human being because they are not going to be sinless human beings. They need to learn from you what it looks like to be a sinful human being who is in relationship with the Lord. They need to learn from you what it looks like to respond to your own sin.”
Much like striving for perfection, comparison is also a threat to authenticity.
“When we are comparing ourselves with other people, we’re still not looking at Him,” Mother Natalia noted.
“This is what we do: ‘Lord, what about her? Well, Lord, she doesn’t have this sin.’ Doesn’t matter that she has her own sins that we probably don’t see – that we definitely don’t see – we just want to be somebody else.”
Hunter-Kilmer followed Mother Natalia by exploring God’s love recorded in Scripture.
A woman’s dignity and worth is in Him, the Notre Dame campus minister and two-time graduate reminded the audience. Nothing in the earthly life can define nor destroy it.
Many women feel a sense of shame, she acknowledged. They define themselves by their sin.
“You aren’t how many followers you have on social media. You aren’t how many people want to be with you or how many people want to be you,” Hunter-Kilmer reminded them.
“You are a totally-accepted, deeply-loved child of God. That’s who you are, and when we fix our eyes on a God Who pours Himself out in love, it begins to change things.”
She encouraged women to remain fixed on God. Much like the phrase, “you are what you eat,” people reflect what they look to. “When we fix our eyes on Him, we become radiant,” she said.
“If you are worshipping the picture-perfect family that everybody knows is just the holiest, what you’re going to radiate is obsession with control.
“We’ve got to fix our eyes on the real God.”
Father LoCoco, 34, who was ordained in 2018, followed Hunter-Kilmer as the conference’s third speaker.
The priest reflected on the “feminine genius,” coined in the 1995 Letter to Women penned by Pope St. John Paul II. The concept recognizes four inherent qualities in women: receptivity, maternity, sensitivity and generosity.
Father LoCoco told the female audience that they were made to receive and give, not compete.
He reflected on competition as an effect of original sin. Before Adam and Eve chose sin in the Garden of Eden, recorded in Genesis, they were comfortable with each other. Afterward, he pointed out, they were ashamed and self-focused.
Father LoCoco noted a lack of accuracy in translation of the verse, “your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). The words, spoken by God to Eve, more likely are intended to read: You shall desire to dominate your husband, and he shall dominate you.
The verse demonstrates a desire for control and domination, not freely giving or receiving. Father LoCoco told women that they must reject comparison and simply be.
He spoke to the breakdown in relationships between men and women.
The priest encouraged the audience to see men as brothers. He reminded them that a masculine heart is designed to love women in a way that females cannot.
Sister Mary Grace, who entered the Sisters of Life religious order in the Bronx, New York, in 2013, served as the penultimate speaker.
The Australia native encouraged women to remain focused on Christ. She suggested three ways to keep their eyes on the Lord: seeing the sacred, forging friendships and embracing the waiting.
She recognized the gift of “sight” that is unique to women.
“We’re living in a time of a feminine advantage to be guardians of all that is good in the world, good in your souls – all that is good in your families, good in your workplaces, good in your colleagues, good in your friends and good in every other place where the world has stopped seeing it,” she said.
“Where men fight for what is good, women carry the capacity of sight to see what is good and refuse to stop seeing it.”
She acknowledged struggles and hardships, too. Each person carries a cross.
Sister Mary Grace reflected on the days leading up to her profession of final vows in 2023.
A large crucifix attached to rosary beads, part of the sisters’ habit, fell off while she was walking outdoors. She was set to receive a new crucifix before her wedding day, when she would profess perpetual vows as a bride of Christ.
The soon-to-be perpetually professed sister recalled her excitement at the thought of a “wedding gift.” About three days before her final profession, Sister Mary Grace’s religious superior placed a box with a crucifix outside her bedroom door.
“I remember opening this box and super excited and pulling it out, and I opened it, and it was this worn out old cross,” she recalled, “and to my sorrow, my first thought was, ‘I don’t want that one.’
“Then I heard the Lord speak to me: ‘You cannot choose your cross, but you can always choose Me.’ Jesus never gives the cross without the gift of Himself upon it.”
Waiting, she acknowledged, is also a part of earthly life. Many women wait for the next step or life event.
“One of the greatest temptations for women today is to be discouraged by the weight of waiting and the worrying whether our mission now has any meaning,” she said, “especially when we can’t control it or see the outcome.
“If we keep our eyes on Jesus and embrace the waiting, our worry will lead us to worship, not away from it,” Sister Mary Grace encouraged.
She recognized that the Mother of God spent time waiting. She endured uncertainty and a lack of understanding when God became man in her womb, and on Holy Saturday, “when all seemed dark and lost” after her Son’s death.
Muha, who followed Sister Mary Grace, shared the story of her son’s death in 1999 while studying at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Brian, 18, was tragically murdered by two young adults in May of his freshman year. The fatherless men were raised by drug dealers. Their mothers were in and out of jail for drug use, shoplifting and prostitution, and they dropped out of school as children.
Muha said she was tempted to hate the men who killed her son.
“I thought about Mary, how the devil must have laughed at her and mocked her while her Son hung on the cross, how he must have said that he won and she lost,” Muha reflected.
“In that most painful moment, Mary kept her eyes on her Son. She stayed at the foot of the cross. What a lesson for us: She gained strength there, and she didn’t give in.”
Muha started The Run The Race Club for inner-city children like her son’s killers. The center gathers children in Columbus’ west side for meals, tutoring, crafts, games, Bible stories and sports.
She also chose to forgive Brian’s murderers.
“Mercy demands that we love them and help them see that they can make their lives in prison their path to heaven,” she said.
“In our culture, we have to be radical witnesses of life. We have to stand up and say all life is precious: the unborn, the elderly, the handicapped, the poor and the criminal.
“I’m not saying they’re not responsible for their actions (killing Brian), because they are, but I am saying, can we help other children, … show them they are not alone, that God loves them so much.”
