Kristina DeNeve: Joining the community

 

Diocesan adult faith formation coordinator Kristina DeNeve is entering the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in the fall

By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Though Kristina DeNeve says she has considered a vocation to the religious life on and off since she was a child, it was not until a few years ago that she seriously began circling around the idea of consecrated life.

She went to school. She taught and worked. She wanted to get married and have children. She kept praying about her vocation.

Now DeNeve, who has been the Diocese of Honolulu’s Office of Religious Education coordinator for adult faith formation and evangelization since late 2012, plans to join the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet later this year.

“As someone who has thought about a vocation on and off my entire life, I never thought this would be happening,” she said. “I’m excited and anxious to begin.”

DeNeve, 50, is a later-in-life candidate to the religious life. She was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools growing up. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and theology from St. Ambrose University, a master’s degree in Christian spirituality from Creighton University, and a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

From 2008 to 2013, she was the director for the Office of Evangelization and Welcoming in the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Before that, DeNeve served as an assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. While at Creighton University, she ran a program in the theological exploration of vocation, taught, researched and offered workshops.

She also has been a board member and online presenter for Paulist Evangelization Ministries and a member of the evangelization committee for the National Conference for Catechetical Leaders.

DeNeve is originally from Moline, Illinois, and still has family in the area. That led in part to her choosing to join the Sisters of St. Joseph’s St. Louis, Missouri, province rather than its Los Angeles province, with which the Hawaii vice-province merged in 2017. There will only be a five-hour drive from St. Louis to visit family.

Another bonus? The town of Carondelet, where the U.S. order began, is a suburb of St. Louis.

“That’s also a bit of an attraction to me about that area,” DeNeve said. “Not only am I going home but I’m also going to the home of the CSJs.”

Carondelet Sisters Francine Costello and Brenda Lau, are two local women religious who connected with DeNeve as she began to seriously discern a vocation to religious life.

Sister Francine said that DeNeve is a strong candidate to be a sister for many reasons, but one of them is that “she’s honest with herself, she knows what she wants, why she wants to join and why she wants to be a part of a religious community.”

For her part, DeNeve said, “I had to spend a lot of time trying to think about being a sister and working through with God about my desire for marriage.”

She had almost settled on the idea of joining the Sisters of St. Joseph before attending the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in 2015. The marriage- and family-centric event reignited her longing to have a husband and children. However, DeNeve said she continued to discern her vocation, and realized recently that she no longer felt that strong compulsion to family life.

Instead, the renewed desire for religious community revealed itself.

Sure about Carondelets

While DeNeve may have struggled over her call to religious life, choosing which women’s religious order to join was much easier. More than a decade ago when DeNeve was first introduced to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet while working at Creighton, the order’s Ignatian-based spirituality attracted her.

Sister Brenda, who is the Hawaii coordinator for the Sisters of St. Joseph, remembers first meeting DeNeve at a diocesan Easter event, where DeNeve chatted with her about how if she joined a religious order she’d like to be a Carondelet sister.

“Oh really? Well, that would be nice!” Sister Brenda recalled.

Sister Francine also remembers DeNeve’s sharing that if indeed God was calling her to be a sister, she wanted to be a Sister of St. Joseph.

“It said something about her and at the same time something about us, that there were some mutual values or expressions of our commitment which were innate in herself,” Sister Francine said. “It was inspiring to me.”

Both Sister Francine and Sister Brenda have met with DeNeve on and off over the last few years and helped her connect with the Carondelet Los Angeles province vocations director as she finalized plans to join the order.

“She’s a delightful, smart woman,” Sister Francine said. “She makes you feel comfortable and I think she feels comfortable with us.”

Leaving Hawaii

While DeNeve’s boss, Jayne Mondoy, was a bit surprised when DeNeve came to her earlier this year to tell her she planned to join the Carondelets, the director of the office of religious education and faith formation said it also made sense.

“I’ve admired her deep sense of spirituality. She really takes the time to center herself, to pray,” she said, noting that DeNeve takes a yearly personal silent retreat in the years she’s been with the Diocese of Honolulu and that she’s “deliberate about building in time for quality prayer.”

DeNeve says Ignatian spirituality is very important to her so she does a daily Examen and the Suscipe prayer. She also attends daily Mass as she is able, reads spiritual books and goes “hiking with God.”

Mondoy describes DeNeve as focused and intentional, someone who is skilled at “helping people deepen their sense of spirituality” in her diocesan work.

Besides being colleagues, Mondoy said she and DeNeve have enjoyed joking back and forth about their loyalties to the San Francisco 49ers (Mondoy) or Green Bay Packers (DeNeve) and Marianist (Mondoy) or Ignatian (DeNeve) spirituality.

“Certainly the Sisters of St. Joseph are gaining someone who is Christ-centered, is thoughtful and is going to be a wonderful addition to their community,” Mondoy said.

DeNeve says it will be hard to leave Hawaii, which she describes as a “true melting pot of race and humanity and culture.” She’ll especially miss the people she’s met and worked with here.

As the adult faith formation coordinator for the diocese, DeNeve’s found great joy in helping people deepen their faith and bring others into Catholicism.

“I’m leaving a very privileged ministry. I’ve been surrounded by all these folks who love Jesus and love their faith,” she said. “It was a fun job.”

In her professional life and ministry, DeNeve said she’s “been really blessed to do some amazing jobs and some amazing ministries.”

“And I could keep doing them for … however many work years I have left. But I don’t really care what I do next.”

Instead she’s excited about getting to experience ministry as part of a community.

“I’m actually excited about how being a part of a religious community might open me up to religious ministry that I would not be able to do if I was on my own,” she said.

DeNeve is one of only a few women in the formation process with ties to the Los Angeles province, says Sister Francine. Two other women are in L.A. for formation. DeNeve will go to St. Louis, Missouri, to join that province for her formation. (There are also provinces in Albany, New York, and St. Paul, Minnesota, and a vice-province in Peru.)

DeNeve took her own vocation quandary back to God many times over the years.

“I want to encourage people who have thought about [a religious vocation] here and there but thought that they couldn’t because of X, to keep taking X back to God,” she said. “Whatever God will do with you and with X, it’s going to be awesome.”