Welcome new (and re-elected) national council members!

Pax Christi USA is happy to announce the results of our 2024 national council elections: Josephine Garnem and Jeff Sved have been re-elected, and Sr. Annie Killian OP will join for the first time. We are deeply grateful for all of the ways Josie, Jeff, and Sr. Annie have already demonstrated and exercised leadership within our community.

“What a gift to serve this beloved community of peacemakers,” said Sr. Annie when receiving news of her election to the national council. “This is a precious time for our movement, when so many generations are journeying together, from Pax Christi USA’s founders to the newest members. It is also a perilous time, for our nation and the world. I firmly believe that our communal prayer, study, and action will sustain us. There’s no way out but through!”

Thank you to everyone who was nominated and to everyone who participated in the election process!

Below you can find a short bio of each of the new council members and the vision statement they shared for the ballot.

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Josephine Garnem (Maryland) has extensive international and domestic experience, working with diverse cultural and socioeconomic communities. Her work overseas has taught her the importance of giving back, diplomacy and appreciating differences. Her work domestically taught her the importance and influence of diaspora communities, as well as engaging governments and embassies to advocate for marginalized communities. She is a passionate community advocate, contemplative in action, public speaker, strategic thinker and policy maker, a natural leader, with advocacy, communication, and interpersonal skills. She strongly believes in Pax Christi USA’s work and mission. 

Vision: “Over the past years serving on Pax Christi’s National Council, I have learned so much and remain humbled by its consistent and much needed work of Love being done by so many. Pax Christi USA can continue to learn and teach others how to be allies to marginalized communities and people of color, actively working towards racial equity and healing. This involves being attentive listeners to those who have experienced racism, genocide and marginalization, amplifying their voices when necessary, keeping up on advocacy, fostering spaces for brave discussions on institutional racism, continuing its role as thought leaders designing and organizing trainings and peaceful protests.

“Pax Christi USA is actively living Howard Thurman’s call to love thy neighbor, even the wrong doers, through our mission to seek mutual worth and value. Pax Christi USA embodies the faith of Christ through love for ALL neighbors, and it is my hope to continue participating in Pax Christi’s National Council as it authentically lives out its commitment to nonviolence and anti-racism, where I’ve also found my own transformation and hope to help transform systems collectively and in every little way I can .”

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Annie Killian, OP, PhD, (Ohio) is a Dominican Sister of Peace and an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio Dominican University in Columbus, OH. She holds graduate degrees from Yale University and the University of Oxford, UK, where her research focused on Christian spirituality, pastoral theology, and ecclesial reform. She joined Pax Christi USA in 2021 and served on the leadership team for the Young Adult Caucus from 2021-23. She has written about peace-making and religious community for Commonweal Magazine and Global Sisters Report. In addition to teaching and writing about social change, she has expertise in academic community engagement and educational justice for the incarcerated.

Vision: “I imagine Pax Christi bringing the gifts of Christian nonviolence into public relationships with groups that may not spring from the same spiritual roots but are likewise resisting the power of Empire. The threat of political violence in this election year, coupled with exorbitant US defense spending, has raised public consciousness of the harm that American-made weapons are inflicting upon vulnerable communities at home and worldwide. People who might normally support the military are growing critical of militarization and its costs. This is a kairos moment for Pax Christi to engage in coalition-building and grow the movement for democracy and liberation. To become an anti-racist organization, we need an intersectional lens in our social analysis of environmental degradation, poverty, mass incarceration, policing, the death penalty, gun violence, nuclear armaments, and solidarity with Indigenous and Palestinian peoples.”

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Jeff Sved (Oregon) was commissioned as a Franciscan lay missioner through Franciscan Mission Service (FMS) in 2012, and lived and served in Cochabamba, Bolivia for four years. While there, he spent most of his time in the prisons, working and learning alongside talented carpenters, leather-workers, and artisans in the prison workshops. Currently he works for death penalty abolition as director of development for the Catholic Mobilizing Network. As a member of the Pax Christi National Council these past three years, Jeff has served on the development committee and recently on the Executive Director Search Committee.

Vision: “From the emphasis on military spending in the national budget to how we understand crime and punishment, our country is overly focused on violence, harm, and destruction. Pax Christi exists to prophetically proclaim that a different way of life is possible. In proclaiming another way of life, we also must model that it is possible. A more restorative understanding of current and historical harm is needed to break the seemingly never ending cycles of violence in our homes, communities, country, and world. My vision is that Pax Christi continues to model restorative approaches to harm and violence at all levels – in interpersonal, communal, national, and global relationships.”