Meet Our New Deacon in Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests: Judy Beaumont

Ordination of Judy Beaumont to the Diaconate on November 15, 2011.

Judy Beaumont has led her entire life in service to God's people. She entered the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago at seventeen and remained in loving service for 35 years. She was a teacher, including teaching Theology in St. Scholastica High School, a refugee worker settling Cambodian and Hmong refugees some of whom are still gratefully in contact with her, and a peace activist. While doing this she attained a Bachelor's degree from Mundelein University and a MRE degree from Loyola University. In 1981 she left Chicago to live in Connecticut and establish a peace witness near Groton, the home of the Trident Submarine, an instrument of mass death. In 1982 she was a member of the Trident Nine Plowshares Action. When jailed for several months she made many reforms in the women's prison system. Her courage inspired many to work for peace and justice. Her story about this is in in: Swords Into Plowshares: Nonviolent Direct Action For Disarmament, First Edition, edited by Arthur J. Laffin and Anne Montgomery, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York: 1987, pp.80-86.

When released from prison she helped establish My Sister's Place, a Shelter for homeless women and children. Moving up in the ranks and doing each job with skill and joy she became the Executive Director of this agency that grew into a multi-tiered agency of four different programs serving women ,children and men in Hartford, Ct. She and Judy Lee, her partner in ministry and life since 1989, left Connecticut for Fort Myers Florida in 1998. There she worked in a Mission Parish and also became the Director of Religious Education for a large parish in Estero, Florida. This service was interupted by her bout with breast cancer then with a rare Leukemia which she has miraculously vanquished with the grace of God since 2007. In 2003, she helped establish Good Shepherd Ministries of SW Florida and works tirelessly in serving the poor and homeless of greater Fort Myers.

She is active in CTA and called forth by the CTA community in Fort Myers as well as the wider Ecumenical community and the Church of the Good Shepherd: An Inclusive Catholic Community where she has served in a Deacon's role since 2007, co-pastoring the flock with love and joy.