Pax Christi USA is happy to announce the results of our 2025 national council elections: Vic Doucette and James Watts have been re-elected, and Lauren Bailey, Arthur Dawes, and Frank Panopoulos (via appointment) will join for the first time. We are deeply grateful for all of the ways James, Vic, Lauren, Arthur, and Frank have already demonstrated and exercised leadership within our community.
Returning council members include Josephine Garnem, Sr. Annie Killian OP, Sr. Susana Nchubiri MM, Jeff Sved, Rozella Apel-Hernández, Lasya Priya, and Bishop President John Stowe, OFM Conv. Sherry Simon and Fr. Fred Thelen have concluded their terms on the national council, and we are deeply grateful for their leadership and service.
Our new national council will hold its first meeting this weekend in Washington DC, so please keep them in your prayers.
Before the meeting begins on Friday, October 3, all are invited to join Pax Christi USA at a vigil at 2 PM at 500 12th Street SW (ICE headquarters) to pray for our immigrant brothers and sisters.
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 and newly re-elected council members.
Vic Doucette (Illinois) has just completed his first term on the Pax Christi USA National Council where he served on the Finance and National Conference planning committees. Now retired, he was most recently Executive Director of the Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM-USA) and before that Director of Programs & Publications for the National Federation of Priests’ Councils (NFPC). In 2017 Vic and his wife Mary founded the Social Justice Resource Center; they send a newsletter to more than 4,000 people around the country each month. He’s active in his local parish community, including facilitating numerous JustFaith groups. He has taught classes for people reentering society after prison, helped welcome several refugee families to the Chicago area, and participated in several service trips to developing countries around the world.
Vision: “I think Pax Christi is an excellent model of nonviolence and anti-racism both in the Church and beyond. In this time of polarizing politics, rising militarism, and white supremacy, I believe we need Pax Christi’s prophetic witness to the world more than ever. Through prayer, study, and direct action, Pax Christi can continue to grow in its commitment to peace and solidarity. Through diversity in its own structures, the use of nonviolent language in its communications, peaceful conflict resolution and building on its existing programs and other resources, I envision Pax Christi not only helping others but modeling the Peace of Christ to the world.”
James Watts (Alabama) has just completed his first term on the Pax Christi USA national council. He is the director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministry for the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama. He works with the community to accomplish goals through community service and board involvement. He has collaborated with the USCCB’s Secretariat of Catholic Education, USCCB’s Secretariat of Cultural Diversity, and served as state captain of Alabama for the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering. He has served as treasurer for the National Association of Black Catholic Administrators (NABCA) and currently serves as membership chair and vice president.
Vision: “Only light can push out the darkness of hate. Having the opportunity to serve on the national council of Pax Christi USA for the last few years, I have witnessed how the organization lives with its vision of creating a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world. From protesting nuclear weapons, justice in Gaza, and reforming the anti-racism committee, this shows that Pax Christi USA is doer of the word. We act. My motto is getting things done.”
Lauren Bailey (Massachusetts) served as Pax Christi USA’s National Field Organizer from 2020-2023. During her time on staff, she met and befriended people from every corner of our movement, witnessing the power and impact of their grassroots advocacy. She is presently an organizing manager with Catholics for Choice, and serves as the board secretary for the Journey of Hope, an anti-death penalty organization. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Bob Shine, whom she met through the Pax Christi Young Adult Caucus.
Vision: “This, to me, is Pax Christi: praying on Ash Wednesday outside the Russian embassy with other young Catholics, the ashes gifted from a beloved Franciscan, the signs hastily made to demand peace. In one moment, the culmination of prayer, study, and action, fostered across generations and strengthened by our diversity. This is the beauty of Pax Christi USA—and the blessing we can offer a US society threatened by autocracy and a world on the brink of war. We must champion nonviolence as the only transformative path forward, teach people how to walk its demanding path, and care for each other as we go. Being attentive to inclusive practices and an intersectional consciousness is vital to our movement being effective and sustainable, a truth so evident in the Young Adult Caucus’ insistence on welcoming LGBTQ+ people, pro-choice Catholics, and others who feel marginalized by the institutional church. So, too, must we keep anti-racism at the heart of our work, and name it as a key lens by which the work is judged. Pax Christi USA’s work is as urgent and as needed today as at its founding, and so we must couple the values from 1972 with lessons from the past fifty years to advance together into a nonviolent future.”
Arthur Dawes (Texas) has experience on boards of directors, quality assurance committees, has worked as an organizer of continuing education programs on social justice, and has leadership experience with a professional association and ethics committees; serving Pax Christi local and state programs have him afforded skills in public social justice education programs.
Vision: “Pax Christi is a Catholic organization whose purpose is to understand, communicate and advocate the teachings of Jesus Christ about peace. This focus is on the Gospels and the values and principles found in Church documents, mostly encyclicals. Loving my enemy is radical. Pray, Study and Act is the process with focused messages. Speaking truth to power with charity and compassion, all the while listening to voices and advocating for the oppressed. More use of the media is necessary. to include NCR and America which have many potential members of Pax Christi. Skills of diplomacy, messaging, and resourcing of persons and materials for peacemaking are utilized and can be intensified, to grow as a community.”
Frank Panopoulos (Maryland), newly appointed to the national council, is a human rights attorney and is an active participant in the Christians for Ceasefire coalition in Washington DC. He has worked on peace and social justice issues since 1979. During the 1980s he was one of Pax Christi International’s NGO representatives at the United Nations and worked on staff for the Catholic Peace Fellowship. At that time, he lived in the Corjesu Community, a lay Catholic community engaged in the works of mercy in Upper Manhattan and affiliated with the Catholic Campus Ministry at Columbia University. Frank has spent time in prison for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, including two Plowshares Actions (AVCO and Trident II). His current work includes representing people arrested at demonstrations in Washington, DC and advising peace and justice non-profits about the potential use against them of executive orders and related laws to curtail speech and civil disobedience.