Mary Pat White

Mary Pat White has had extensive experience working with young adults as a Campus Minister and as Vocation Director.  She also has a life-long commitment to peacemaking and social justice.   As a Newman campus minister in Davis and San Luis Obispo, CA, Mary Pat had the opportunity of inviting students to join her in spending nights in homeless shelters and serving in community meal programs. In San Luis Obispo she was an "honorary member" of Progressive Student Alliance at  Cal Poly Technical University and joined them in campus and community protests. She also felt called to participate in civil disobedience on a number of occasions protesting the United States in El Salvador at the capitol building in Sacramento, at the Nevada Nuclear Center, and at Vandenberg AFB to protest the outbreak of the war in Iraq. Whereas on most occasions community service was the sentence for acts of civil disobedience, the Vandenberg action resulted in 3 years of probation which, however, was reduced to a year and a half because of good behavior, and perhaps, because of a probation officer who, quietly, seemed to support Mary Pat's values.  But one moment when her love of Justice and her work with young adults most fruitfully aligned was when she lived and worked at Duchesne House for Volunteers in New Orleans helping young people reflect on their experience of rebuilding homes for low-income families after Hurricane Katrina. To read more about Mary Pat's work in New Orleans, click on the link below her picture.