Donna Garrett has been a member of Regnum Christi for 25 years, and in that time, she has served as a full-time apostle in an enormous variety of roles, including team leader, section director, local coordinator, and local director. She has also been involved with ECYD and Challenge, has led Mission Youth missions, and has served on both the governance board of RC in North America and the board of RC Education. Donna considers Regnum Christi to be a tremendous gift to herself, her marriage, and her family, providing a multitude of experiences to serve the Church, and witness the life-changing impact the Regnum Christi charism can have, in her own diocese and around the world.
Besides being a local RC team leader and spiritual director in the Heartland locality, Donna is currently as the Director of the RC Life Department for the Territory of North America, helping to develop resources to enable and encourage RC members and leaders to fully live their Regnum Christi identity. She also sits on the board for Catholic Worldview Fellowship, and, along with her husband, facilitates leadership training for the seminarians studying humanities at Cheshire. Donna will now be joining four other elected lay delegates – Andrew Rawicki, Cathie Zentner, Horacio Gomez, and Tony Frese – and Kerrie Rivard, a lay delegate who was elected to the RC General Plenary Council at the last General Convention and will participate in this Convention ex-officio in that role.
The preparation for the General Convention has been carried out in three phases that shift the emphasis from the local to the territorial and, finally, to the general level. The territorial phase, which served as a meeting between localities and a forum to address issues common to all of them, took place in the second half of 2023 and concluded with the celebration of the Territorial Conventions. Donna, who has been deeply involved in the Regnum Christi renewal process from the beginning, is eager to see how in this final phase, culminating with the General Convention in April, God will be leading Regnum Christi forward in mission.
“The desire on my heart is to see how the work of the first convention, which focused more on structures and canonical realities, has cultivated the ground and nurtured the seeds of the charism to bear fruit for the Church in every territory, and to see more clearly where the Holy Spirit is calling Regnum Christi to respond to collaborate in her mission.”
Donna holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing and several certificates in catechesis and spiritual studies, including the Spiritual Direction Certificate from Divine Mercy University. Donna and her husband, Jeff, to whom she has been married for nearly 35 years, live in Omaha, Nebraska, and have four young adult children scattered across the United States, as well as five grandchildren. Donna oversees the RC Life department and the RCSpirituality Center for the Territory of North America. It is with gratitude and love that she places her time, talent, and treasure at the service of her spiritual family, Regnum Christi.
The members of Regnum Christi, represented at the General Convention by elected delegates including Legionaries of Christ, Consecrated Women of Regnum Christ, and lay Regnum Christi members, are impelled by the personal experience of Christ’s love, feel the inner urgency to make his Kingdom present, give witness to what they have lived and experienced, and thus seek to respond to the needs of the world and of the Church.
The Regnum Christi General Convention, as an event of the Spirit, involves three actions: illumination, discernment and action. As an event of the Spirit, synodal, Eucharistic, and prayerful, the convention should illuminate Christian apostolic life, as well as conclude with concrete decisions on the life and mission of Regnum Christi.; it is about letting the Spirit blow on our embers and fan the fire of love, light and joy of the Gospel in us.
The General Convention is a strong moment in the life of the Kingdom – a Eucharistic, communitarian event, of union of each and everyone in the Body of Christ. It is about praying together, united in one faith and one mission, and receiving a Word from God about the needs of the Church and the world, with the intention of doing the will of the Father at this moment in history and from the Regnum Christi charism. The General Convention, whose theme is Discerning & Living the Mission Together, will begin on April 29, 2024, and is expected to last six days. To find out more, visit rcgeneralconvention.org.
