Santa Clara University has announced that Sister Francisca Ngozi Uti, HHCJ, is one of three finalists for the annual Opus Prize, "one of the world's largest faith-based, humanitarian awards for social innovation." It's a special prize with finalists, most "unsung heroes," selected each year in a process run by different Catholic universities, with nominees coming from secret spotters (similar to the MacArthur Fellowship [popularly known as "genius grants"]). It's a process we know well, as Georgetown University was the 2013 host for the Opus Prize, and I served on the Opus Prize foundation board. The prize shines light on people whose creative and often dangerous work is far too little known. And the prize is indeed notable: the laureate receives $1 million while the other two finalists each receive $100,000.
And Sister Ngozi is a worthy nominee! We had the chance to get to know her well, as she spent two weeks at Georgetown in 2023. She is one of 10 Catholic sisters from Africa who were part of a pilot program to enhance their leadership capacity on empowering women and girls. Funding was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The Georgetown program aimed to build leadership skills and engage with a wide range of institutions that work on this challenge. This is an example of an ideal pilot, as Georgetown is now recruiting a cohort of Catholic sisters for the full Women Faith Leaders Fellowship (WFLF) which will be based here.
Sister Ngozi comes from Nigeria, where she founded and leads the Centre for Women Studies and Intervention (CWSI), an initiative of the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus. CWSI works to empower women and other vulnerable persons in Nigeria to be liberated and active in the creation of a better world. It aims to uphold the dignity of women and other vulnerable people through capacity-building, advocacy, awareness-raising, research, and documentation of pressing issues.
Sister Ngozi says that she benefited from the time she spent at Georgetown during the program, and she contributed in important ways to its development. As Sister Ngozi describes it (along with generous thanks to the Georgetown team that hosted her), she arrived at Georgetown's Berkley Center "having no idea what the [Women Faith Leaders Fellowship] had in store for me."
But in retrospect, it was, she says, "an opportunity I treasure and will always treasure. One of the objectives of the program was to give visibility to Catholic nuns whose apostolates in often hard to reach areas go unnoticed. The exposure and the contacts I made gave me courage to keep going. I believe this nomination as one of the finalists for the Opus Prize award is not unconnected with the time spent from Georgetown to the end of the program in New York at the United Nations General Assembly."'
Sister Ngozi's nomination is an exciting witness to the light that this special fellowship program can shine on innovative and courageous work for social justice.
