March 24, 2026 // Local

Notre Dame Fiat Program Trains Leaders to Walk with Those Who Are Suffering

Paula Lent

“As a Church, we are called to embody a more integrated way of receiving and caring for each person – not as a problem to be fixed, not as the sum of one’s symptoms, and not as determined by a diagnosis, but as someone created in God’s image and likeness, created in, through, and for love.”

This vision, outlined in the course workbook, lies at the heart of the Fiat Program on Faith and Mental Health, an initiative of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. Through its signature 10-week online course, the program forms diocesan and parish leaders to help their parishes become places of hope and communion for the entire Body of Christ – especially those who suffer.

For many involved in parish ministry, this need is familiar.

One lay minister connected with the program told Today’s Catholic: “I notice in our parish communities a lot of ‘projects,’ which happen on a rotating basis but don’t step into the messiness of life with folks. The accompaniment seems somewhat at arm’s length. Though brief touchpoints are necessary, and boundaries are critical, there are also situations that need ongoing outreach and accompaniment. This is where we need to grow in our care for one another.”

Begun in 2022, the Fiat Program emerged from a discernment process undertaken by an advisory committee at the invitation of the joint advisory council of the McGrath Institute and the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame. The question put to the committee was whether the organizations might do more in the area of mental health.

It was a question born from a family’s courageous journey of hope and love. Advisory council chairs Dave and Lesley Osborn posed it after journeying with their daughter, Anne Elizabeth, who lived with borderline personality disorder – an illness that ultimately claimed her life.

“They had the courage and insight to invite us to discern what more can be done because of their own family’s journey,” Beth Hlabse, director of the Fiat Program, told Today’s Catholic. “Dave and Lesley are people of profound hope, and they recognized the need for more support for persons and families living with mental illness.”

A Mission Inspired by Mary

Under the guidance of Lisa Anderson, a mental health advocate and leader in the South Bend community, the advisory committee prayed, researched, and discerned for several months before presenting a proposal in the fall of 2021. When it was approved, it was mutually discerned that the McGrath Institute would house the program. The program’s name honors Mary’s acceptance of the invitation to receive the incarnate Lord. Her fiat serves as a model for the Church’s call to receive Christ, particularly in those who suffer.

“Her fiat was such a courageous and hopeful ‘yes’ to receiving the Body of Christ here on earth,” Hlabse reflected. “We are called to echo Mary’s fiat in how we care for one another.”

The Fiat Program notes well that its mission is not to replace sound psychological care. While the course provides an overview of the mental health landscape and includes focuses on trauma, relational wounds, addiction, and suicide prevention, its aim is not to train ministry leaders in diagnostic expertise. Rather, it rests on the recognition that “As a Church, we are uniquely equipped to offer what psychological support cannot do on its own,” by providing communities of caring presence, according to the workbook for the course, which helps ministry leaders discern how they can participate in God’s movement of drawing near to those who suffer by drawing near themselves and helping their communities to do the same.

“So often, suffering involves desolation,” the Fiat course workbook states. “We need the Church community to make present to us that we are not alone or abandoned by God … we are called to live and embody the presence of Christ with us in the ways we care for one another. … Through the sacramental life, traditions of prayer, and ways of accompanying others, Christ offers us a communion that is both with Himself and one another. … The question of suffering always involves a response of love.”

Close Cohorts

In pursuit of this aim, the Fiat Program cultivates such communion first within the cohorts themselves. The online course is offered in partnership with dioceses that recommend ministry leaders to participate.

“It’s not possible for just anyone to register,” Hlabse told Today’s Catholic. “And we do that because we are incarnational people. Even though the class is online, it’s important that the people who take the course get to know others in their local area who are also serving [in ministry] and that they grow in relationship with one another.”

Typically, a small group of leaders is recommended by their diocese to take the course in the spring, then those leaders guide a larger diocesan cohort through the course in the fall. Lectures are pre-recorded, allowing the weekly virtual meetings to focus on prayer, reflection, and discussion.

“It’s very interactive,” Hlabse said. “This is intended so that leaders can reflect together on the needs of their particular communities and to support each other’s discernment of how to meet these needs through their ministries,” she added, noting that participants include parish staff and volunteers, deacons, priests, Catholic school educators, and mental health therapists.

The program’s impact has taken different forms across cohorts. Hlabse pointed to a parish in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

“We had a leader go through Fiat who then discerned that she felt called to offer the course for fellow parishioners at her parish,” Hlabse said. “And this forged a beautiful community in this rural parish. Through the Fiat leader’s shepherding care, folks came to know each other more deeply and got to practice listening and receiving one another on a weekly basis,” she shared. After completing the course, the group chose to continue meeting and began a book study that welcomed more parish members.

“My hope is that Fiat helps to strengthen a sense of community and belonging within parishes,” Hlabse said. “The leaders who complete Fiat end up forging a strong sense of community amongst themselves. But, these communities don’t exist for themselves. These communities are ordered toward helping our participants cultivate a sense of hopeful belonging in their parishes.”

Helping Others Carry Their Crosses

Hlabse said that for many of the men and women who complete the Fiat Course, the primary impact has been that they have grown in their relationship with God.

“Then in their day-to-day relationships, they describe being better able to listen, to care, and to walk with others, whether in their families or one-to-one accompaniment in their work or volunteering. It’s interesting: We have noticed a beautiful relationship between how they describe their closeness to God and their ability to be present to others.”

One participant described this change: “Before taking this course, I used to think of prayer as something I do at discreet times during the day, and now I find I’m praying throughout my day. And so often, when I’m having a conversation with someone, I will just kind of recollect myself and be in prayer and ask for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to guide me. And because of that, I’m able to slow down and just be more present and receptive of the other.”

This isn’t the only way that a more integrated prayer life has informed how participants walk with others. As they went through the course, a group of four ministers who offer a faith sharing and support group for people living with mental illness and their loved ones in a small California parish became an example to Hlabse herself, demonstrating what it means to offer a daily “yes” to remaining with another’s suffering, rather than turning away from it.

“When we’re walking with someone who suffers, we can feel the pain and discomfort of their suffering. And so, we may attempt to do away with our own discomfort by jumping to problem-solving or ‘fixing,’ or by distancing ourselves,” Hlabse reflected. “But these ministers reveal a commitment to continuing to journey with those in their faith-sharing group, to share their experience. They feel the pain of those they walk with. … And I’ve learned from how they bring this to prayer and cry out to Our Lord with the pain of those they walk with. I witness to their example, which reveals that we can’t take on the pain of another, but we can carry it to Christ – and this involves ongoing entrustment.”

Cultivating Hope and Belonging

Hlabse highlighted that after the course, empirical evaluations of participants show increases in hope and decreases in stigma, loneliness, and burnout.

“This is important,” Hlabse explained, “because if we’re trying to cultivate belonging and hope in our communities, we ourselves need to experience hope and belonging in order to be able to bring it to others.”

Though the Fiat Program has no formal partnership with the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, several diocesan leaders have gone through the course, including through its inaugural cohort, and they are now participating in the Fiat Program’s new alumni initiative of fellowship groups who gather monthly for prayer and reflection.

The Fiat Program also produced a four-part video resource with McGrath’s Bishop John M. D’Arcy Program in Priestly Renewal, which was recently sent to priests throughout the diocese. Noting that “to be human is to be vulnerable” – and priests are often under a lot of stress – Hlabse said the series invites priests to prayerfully take stock of their well-being and discern what resources they might benefit from.

Through a Lily Foundation grant, the McGrath Institute has founded the Magnify Initiative, which will work with Fiat to develop an online resource library highlighting stories of accompaniment, models of fruitful ministry, and the work of program alumni.

While the program’s initiatives continue to expand, the heart of Fiat remains simple: forming Christians who know how to draw near to suffering with faith, compassion, and hope, so that parishes become places where those who suffer are not met with distance or quick solutions but with the patient presence of Christ reflected through His people.

By learning to listen, pray, and walk alongside one another, alumni witness to the truth that accompaniment is not a specialized ministry reserved for a few but a calling entrusted to the whole Church. They model Mary’s courageous “yes” to receive Christ’s body and to remain close to it in the midst of profound suffering.