|
"Frankly, I never wanted a career. Things
just kept ending up in my lap," says Patricia "Pip"
(nee Puccetti) Donahoe, Class of ’78. Bouncing on her
lap now are two beautiful children, Andrew Kim and Theresa
Kim (ages 2 and 8 months), whom she and her husband Tom adopted
from Korea and named after Korean martyrs.
Yet the kinds of things that have dropped
into Pip’s lap over the years since she graduated from
the College are the publication of an acclaimed 24-volume
catechetical series, the management of a New York philanthropic
organization, and the representation of the Holy See at critical
United Nations conferences around the world. She blames it
all on the College. "How else would a young girl
from Medford, Oregon, end up in a Park Avenue office and represent
the Holy See at international conferences? The College gave
me the ability to do these things," she says.
After graduation, Pip obtained her Master’s
Degree in Religious Education/Catechetics from the Pontifical
Institute for Advanced Studies in Catholic Doctrine at St.
John’s University in Queens, New York, then one of two
pontifical institutes in the country.
While there, she began work with Catholics
United for the Faith, an organization dedicated to educating
the faithful about Church teaching. She was involved in various
writing projects and edited CUF’s monthly magazine, Lay
Witness. When CUF had tried unsuccessfully to obtain the rights
to reprint an old, but good, catechetical series, Col. William
Lawton, CUF’s vice-president, and Msgr. Eugene Kevane,
one of her graduate school professors, each told her, "Just
write one up yourself — you went to Thomas Aquinas."
Pip was flabbergasted, but she plunged in. By the time she
was done, she had overseen production of a 24-volume religious
education textbook, the Faith and Life Series, now published
by Ignatius Press. Peter Kreeft and Fr. Joseph Fessio are
among those who hail her series.
Her work at CUF caught the eye of Msgr. Eugene
Clark, pastor of St. Agnes Church in New York City, who was
then a director of the Homeland Foundation. That foundation,
established by the late Chauncey Stillman (a long-time Catholic
philanthropist and member of the College’s Board of Governors)
recruited her to its work: managing the art and antique carriage
collection of Stillman’s estate; making various grants
to Catholic educational projects; and supporting the Weathersfield
Institute which is dedicated to promoting Catholic culture
and intellectual pursuits.
When she protested that she was unfit for
part of the job, which required scrutiny of financial statements
and accounting methods, the Foundation’s president responded:
"Look, if you can read Euclid, you can read this stuff."
And so she did. In 1990, Pip became the day-to-day manager
of all three ventures, while accepting a directorship at CUF.
In the meantime, she was a veritable blizzard
of social activity in Manhattan, organizing book-reading groups,
play-reading groups, ballroom dance classes ("Flamenco
is my favorite," she laughs) and singing gigs for the
schola, "Musica Pro Dominum." She also spent more
than a dozen years serving as a catechism teacher/advisor
for the Narnia Clubs Program in Manhattan and as the founding
board member of the New York Catholic Forum, which featured
a monthly lecture series.
But in 1995, John Klink, a member of the
Holy See’s United Nations delegation, recommended Pip
to Archbishop Renato Martino, who invited her to join the
delegation for the UN Conference on Social Development in
Copenhagen. She was thereafter invited to join the delegation
for the UN Fourth World Conference of Women in Beijing and
the UN World Conference on Habitat in Istanbul. In spite of
the controversial subject matter that often was at issue in
the conferences, Pip was impressed with how professional most
of the governmental delegates were.
"Even though the Vatican delegation
was such a small group, I was amazed at its influence. Other
nations really look to the Vatican as their conscience, even
if they’d rather the Vatican just go away. They know
that, unlike nations, the Vatican is not operating out of
self-interest."
She was sorely dismayed to see the American
delegation as the big pusher of abortion and homosexual rights.
"It was shameful what this delegation under this Administration
was trying to do."
Pip’s role on each delegation –
which ranged from 14 to 25 Catholics from around the world
– was the "backroom-deal negotiator." The conference
would submit a disputed textual issue to a break-out session,
where conflicting parties would try to resolve differences.
"Most of our work was in containing the forces pushing
bad things under the guise of ambiguous, rights-loaded language,
and in speaking out on behalf of smaller, poorer countries
who were often
|
|
handicapped in their participation by the
lack of English-speaking representatives and funds."
Pip married Tom Donahoe in 1993, and in 1997,
she left the Homeland Foundation to care for their new baby,
Andrew Kim. While Pip has finally settled into the career
she was first looking for, she has not slowed with her passion
for serving Catholic interests. She remains a board member
of the prestigious National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston,
as well as of Good Counsel Homes, Inc., an organization that
provides homes for single mothers. Further participation in
other of the Holy See UN delegations remains a possibility.
"I can’t help it I got into all
of these things," she quips. "It was Thomas Aquinas
College that got me into them!"
|
Patricia
with daughter Theresa Kim,
and son Andrew Kim
|
