Top photo caption: Father Melvin Díaz Aponte, pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, and Carmen Alicia Rodríguez Echevarría, principal of the parish school, are pictured in an undated photo.They received the Catholic Extension Society’s 2025-2026 Lumen Christi Award. For the 2026-2027 award, Chicago-based Catholic Extension has received 46 nominees from dioceses all over the U.S. OSV News photo/Benny Bautista, Catholic Extension Society
By OSV News
CHICAGO OSV News – The Catholic Extension Society, based in Chicago, has received 46 nominees for its 2026-2027 Lumen Christi Award, and they hail from Alaska, Oregon and Maine to Southern California, Florida and Puerto Rico – and many places in between.
The Lumen Christi Award is Catholic Extension’s highest honor. Since 1978, it has been presented annually to people “who radiate and reveal the light of Christ present in the communities where they serve.”
Each year, bishops are asked to nominate one individual, group or institution from their diocese for the award. Collectively, their stories of spiritual care, compassionate service, and compelling self-sacrifice for others showcase the mission of the U.S. Church.
“The Lumen Christi Award is a real-time window into the incredible impact of people of faith in America,” Father Jack Wall, president of Catholic Extension Society, said in a statement. “Born out of their love for God, the dedication of these nominees to the good of the Church and the good of their neighbors should make us all proud to be Catholic.”
From this year’s 46 nominees, announced June 24, a group of finalists will be announced later this summer, followed by the selection of a national honoree in the fall. Award finalists will receive $15,000 each, and the national honoree will be awarded $100,000 to support their ministry.
The list of nominees and their ministries includes:
– An Iraq war vet in the Diocese of Fresno, California, who is a full-time Catholic chaplain at Pleasant Valley State Prison in California’s Central Valley.
– The leader of a summer camp that helps teens find their place in the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, Montana.
– A business man who as a deacon in the Diocese of Laredo, Texas, has a radio ministry to long-haul truck drivers providing spiritual and emotional accompaniment by praying meditations and the rosary with them.
– A registered nurse, wife and mother who works additional hours at her day job to fund Black Catholic youth ministry in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana.
– A deacon in the Diocese of San Bernardino, California who, with his wife, ministers to six Church communities on Native American reservations in Southern California.
– The coordinator of Hispanic ministry in the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, who is caring for children “orphaned” by immigration arrests.
– A former Washington Post journalist who founded the Maronite Servants of Christ the Light, in the Eparchy of St. Maron of Brooklyn, New York, to provide religious formation to children, youth and adults; promote religious vocations;and serve the sick, homebound and grieving.
– A Piarist priest in the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, at the Piarist School in Prestonsburg – in the poorest congressional district in the U.S. – who works with faculty to ensure that 100% of the students at the school he founded go to college.
– Sapa Un Jesuit Academy in the Diocese of Rapid City, South Dakota, a K-8 Catholic school located on the Rosebud Indian Reservation that is a ministry of St. Francis Mission to form future leaders for the reservation.
Last year, out of more than 40 nominees, the 2025-2026 Lumen Christi Award went to a pastor and an educator: Father Melvin Díaz, pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, and Carmen Alicia Rodríguez Echevarría, the parish school’s principal.
The award’s $100,000 was shared by the honorees and the Diocese of Ponce, to put toward the continual efforts to rebuild the historic Immaculate Conception parish and school after a 6.4 magnitude quake almost completely leveled the parish buildings in 2020.
The mission of Catholic Extension Society, founded in 1905, is to build up the Catholic faith communities in underserved regions of the U.S., including offshore U.S. territories.
The full list of Catholic Extension’s 46 nominees for the Lumen Christ Award is at: https://www.catholicextension.org/what-we-do/lumen-christi-award/2026-2027-lumen-christi-award-nominees.
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