Many Charisms, One Spirit, One Call

Tuesday, August 11 -- Friday, August 14, 2026
Rosen Center
Orlando, Florida

LCWR will be hosting a gathering of women and men religious from across the Americas for input, prayer, reflection, and, most importantly, contemplative conversations on the significance of religious life for today and for the future. The gathering is a way for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to mark the 70th anniversary of its establishment by hosting an event that supports the deepening of religious life into the future.

A gathering of a significant number of religious from Canada, the United States, and Latin America would be an historic first that would provide a venue where we can come to understand, appreciate, and support those of us who are living this lifeform through a diversity of expressions. The gathering is being designed as an experience that has the potential to be transformative – for each participant individually and for the collective body of religious in the Americas.

While the gathering will include input from speakers, the main focus of the entire event will be on the small group conversations that we envision as personal, experience-based, and profound. Input on how religious life may continue to respond to the critical needs of the world and church will be offered to spark the conversations. In these exchanges, participants will name the experiences, hopes, and dreams that hold meaning for them and provide some insight into what may be on the horizon for religious life and its continued service to the world. The sharing will be conducted in the style of the church’s Synod on Synodality using the Conversation of the Spirit process.

Conversation in the Spirit Sessions

Three Conversation in the Spirit sessions will be held to explore how religious life is both mystical and prophetic, rooted in deep attentiveness to the Spirit, and expressed through courageous response to the needs of the world. Each session will begin with brief input from a woman or man religious from one of the regions of the continent, offering a personal reflection on how they are responding to the needs of the world as a religious. These presenters will help ground the conversation in lived experience. Participants will then prayerfully listen to one another’s experiences of how religious life is encountering the realities of our time, discern what the Spirit may be revealing through these encounters, and reflect together on the call emerging for the future. Moving from listening, to communal discernment, to shared response, these conversations invite us to recognize how many charisms, in one Spirit, continue to answer one call in service to God’s people and the world.

One Spirit, One Call: Carrying the Grace Forward

On the closing day of the event, we will look more closely at the critical needs of the world calling us as religious. We will have time in cohort groups to name the grace each group believes they received during the event and a commitment they wish to collectively embrace. Before closing the event, we will pause in prayer and reflection to consider how the insights and movements of the Spirit will accompany us home. Together we will reflect on what has touched our hearts, what calls for deeper response, and how the gift of many charisms in one Spirit continues to shape our shared mission. This time offers space to name the grace received and to carry forward the one call that now invites us into the future.