dl-dccw-convention-speaker-conroy.jpgThe Diocesan Council of Catholic Women will hold its 80th annual convention Tuesday, Oct. 12, at Hamilton's in Jacksonville. The Jacksonville Deanery will serve as host. The theme for the convention will be "Mary, Star of Hope."

The convention will begin at 7:30 a.m. with registration and refreshments and will conclude at 4 p.m. Msgr. Carl A. Kemme, V.G., moderator of the curia, will celebrate the Holy Eucharist.

The featured speaker will be Susan Conroy, a native of Portland, Maine. Conroy is author of Mother Teresa's Lessons of Love and Secrets of Sanctity. She will share her experience of Mother Teresa while she worked as a volunteer in a children's orphanage and in the Home for the Dying in Calcutta, India. She has made numerous television appearances in recent years, for local as well as world wide audiences. In 2007, she began taping a mini-series of shows titled Speaking of Saint ..., which began airing in June on EWTN, a global television network. Convention participants will have an opportunity to purchase her book and have it autographed.

Convention attendees, on all levels of the DCCW, will have the opportunity to resolve concerns in the session titled "I Have Questions?" Presenters will be from DCCW membership sharing what has worked to strengthen parish women's councils and the NCCW commission system.

The attendees, from across the Springfield diocese, will have time for spiritual enrichment, renewal of friendships and making new friends, viewing displays, and finding out what works in other parishes and deaneries.

A silent auction will be held and attendance prizes awarded. Raffle tickets can be purchased, before or after the convention, for a machine-quilted throw (78 x 70 inches, made by Rita Miller, V.P., St. Louis, Nokomis) and pot-of-gold.

Registration is $35 before Sept. 30. After Sept. 30, registration increases to $42. Registration forms can be clipped from Catholic Times and the DCCW newsletter, Catholic Women in Focus, available in parishes, from deanery presidents or on the diocesan web site www.dio.org .

For further information contact Lilly Eckert, DCCW president, at (217) 877-7711 or .