Dear SJEM Sponsored Leaders,
Each year, SJEM sponsored institutions are asked to provide an annual report asking you and your community to reflect upon and provide evidence of both your Catholic identity and mission/charism being lived out on your campuses. As SJEM sponsored institutions committed to being Catholic ministries in the CSJ tradition, we are responsible to integrate Catholic identity and our charism of unifying love.
This coming academic year, SJEM will join the Holy See in a particular focus on serving the poor. Pope Leo XIV having authored his first exhortation, Dilexi Te (“I Have Loved You”), has invited the people of the Church to contemplate Christ’s love, that we may be inspired to become attentive to the suffering and needs of others, and to share in the work of liberation that flows from his love. To help with familiarizing oneself to Dilexi Te and all of the ways in which we can deepen our understanding, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has gathered resources in a helpful manner.
With this concentration in mind, SJEM invites our sponsored ministries to consider how they are attentive to the needs of the suffering in our world. We believe that our CSJ charism of unifying love, or loving unity, is intimately in relationship with the justice teachings of our Church that help us to have a strong sense of how we are called to serve the poor, our dear neighbors all around us. Provided below, are the seven primary principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) that we will use to reflect on for the 2026 Annual Sponsorship Report. How does your campus community practice and preach the social conscience we are emboldened to have and develop further as institutions of Catholic education?
Please ensure that submissions are in Word document format. The prompt for SJEM’s 2026 Annual Sponsorship Report is: Please choose five of the following themes of CST and explore how your SJEM sponsored institution goes about the practice of justice through the chosen theme for reflection. Each response to a theme should be 2-3 paragraphs in length. Please submit related visuals/photos permitted to be shared with SJEM for the purpose of our communications and report to Rome.
Please invite 5 authors to contribute a response to one theme of CST listed below. Authors should include one faculty member of a discipline unrelated to theology, religious studies, or pastoral care, one fourth year student (In the case of St. Joseph Hearing + Speech, please choose a community member of your preference perhaps an alum or parent), the campus minister, mission officer, or faculty of a theologically related field, the president or head of the educational ministry and a board member of the institution. Each author should be identified by name and title for the submission and responds only to one of the five chosen on behalf of your ministry. (Please note: all report content, although not comprehensively, will be subject to use for SJEM purposes in our annual report to the Vatican and SJEM newsletters.)
- Life and Dignity of the Human Person
- Call to Family, Community and Participation
- Rights and Responsibilities
- Option for the Poor and Vulnerability
- The Dignity of Work and the Rights and Workers
- Solidarity
- Care for God’s Creation
Please refer to SJEM’s website on Catholic Identity and Charism as helpful resources for responses. If you have any questions, please email Cara McMahon, SJEM executive director.
The 2026 deadline for submission is: May 15th .