Animator of Faith Doing Justice
By Rachel Amiri
Mary Baudouin, provincial assistant for justice and ecology, advocate and organization-builder in Catholic social ministry for more than 50 years, is retiring from the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province this year. Deeply committed to the Society of Jesus, Baudouin has helped Jesuits and Jesuit institutions take to heart the promotion of justice since 2003.
“My role, more than anything over the last 20+ years, has been as an animator of the social apostolate and work for ecological justice,” she said.
Those efforts have been wide ranging and impactful, rooted in a personal vocation found learning from, teaching and working alongside Jesuits.
Organizing for Justice
An expert organizer, Baudouin has helped connect initiative and enthusiasm with the structural support that allows organizations to sustain growth and make an impact.
“There’s power in people banding together to make changes. I think that’s the only way changes get made,” she said. Securing nonprofit status, setting goals and keeping people engaged in the work are all important efforts in the work of faith doing justice, she said, even if the organizational work feels endless and progress slow.
Her expertise has contributed to the success of organizations including the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans, the Encuentro Project in El Paso, Texas, the Ignatian Solidarity Network, the USA Central and Southern Province’s Jesuit Grants Collaborative, the Harry Tompson Center in New Orleans and two chapters of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, in Denver and New Orleans.
The Harry Tompson Center, a day shelter for unhoused people, is particularly close to Baudouin’s heart. She has supported it since its beginning as a project of Immaculate Conception Parish – known in New Orleans as “the Jesuit parish” – and through the significant rebuilding required after Hurricane Katrina and a recent major renovation.
“It’s a beautiful thing to behold God working in that space,” she said. “The atmosphere of care and respect that that has been created there is really something special. It’s like holy ground.”
As board chair, Baudouin recently helped to lead the Harry Tompson Center through a major capital campaign to renovate the center. In early 2026, Jesuit Superior General Arturo Sosa, SJ, toured the renovated day shelter and visited with guests.
Social Work as Vocation
A lifelong Catholic and New Orleanian, Baudouin is an alumna of Loyola University New Orleans, where she studied social work and, together with other students, founded the Loyola University Community Action Project (LUCAP), which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026. It was under the mentorship of Jesuit Fathers Stephen Rowntree, Ted Arroyo and John Payne that she found not only a career, but a vocation.
“They really helped to form me,” Baudouin said. “I’d always been interested in social work, but this work combined my faith and my professional interests in a way that just kind of lit me on fire.”
Baudouin honed her skills as an organizer and leader at Catholic Charities of New Orleans and the archdiocesan Office of the Social Apostolate. Following the publication of the U.S. bishops’ pastoral letter “Economic Justice for All” in 1987, she led the implementation efforts at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. She also spent years consulting with faith-based nonprofits of all sizes.
In 2003, Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ, then-provincial of the former New Orleans Province, invited Baudouin to serve as the first full-time assistant for social ministry. “It felt like coming home in many ways,” Baudouin said. She was enthusiastic about the opportunity to work alongside Jesuits who were fully invested in the promotion of justice.
“Father Kammer always dreamed really big,” Baudouin said. Initial plans included an academic institute examining issues of poverty and justice, as well as a Cristo Rey Jesuit school that later opened in Houston.
When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the storm’s devastation dictated a redirection of the province’s social ministry efforts. It also forced Baudouin’s family to relocate to the Jesuit property in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Baudouin coordinated volunteer groups from around the country during the initial recovery and spent three years helping to secure grants to ensure that the province’s social ministries survived.
The hurricane’s disproportionate impact on the poorest in New Orleans also prompted an institutional response, she said.
“The need for something like the Jesuit Social Research Institute (JSRI) became really clear after Katrina,” said Baudouin. She helped develop the framework for JSRI, dedicated to examining poverty, race, racism and migration through the lens of Catholic social teaching in the coastal South and served as a fellow for the fledgling organization.
Companioning Jesuits
“One of my favorite things that I do is I help to form novices to understand not just the social apostolate, but to understand the faith that does justice and what that means for Jesuits,” Baudouin said. Over two decades, she’s played a role in the formation of Jesuits – ultimately impacting everyone those Jesuit minister to and with.
She has helped guide novices in reflecting on their apostolic experiences through the specific lens of the social problems they encountered, and how Catholic social teaching – and Jesus himself – invites them to respond.
“Younger Jesuits have a real interest in this. They really perk up, and sometimes say, ‘This is why I became a Jesuit,’” she said. “To help them make that connection is really important, to realize that it’s part of the Jesuits’ shared history, but it can also be a part of their future.”
Baudouin also invites novices into new experiences, such as a retreat at Angola State Prison in Louisiana led by incarcerated men, culminating in a mutual sharing of vocation stories by the novices and the incarcerated peer ministers.
“It is really an experience, literally, of being evangelized by the poor,” Baudouin said.
Beyond social justice issues, Baudouin has contributed to reflections on collaboration with women in the Society of Jesus and led Jesuits in formation in reflecting on their current and future work alongside women and contributed to the province’s commission on women.
“We (women) are in mission with the Society of Jesus. We don’t have the same kind of commitment, but we have the same kind of love of the mission and love of the faith that does justice. I want Jesuits to remember that and to be inclusive of women who have a calling, but a different kind of calling,” Baudouin said.
“How lucky am I to have been able to do this?”
Featured Image: Mary Baudouin addresses supporters gathered for the ribbon-cutting and opening of the Harry Tompson Center renovation in New Orleans in 2025.
