Watch Marianne Duddy-Burke's video message:

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Dear DignityUSA Community,

I am writing to let you know that, after thoughtful and prayerful consideration, I have decided the time is right for me to step down from my role as Executive Director of DignityUSA in the coming months. The past few years have brought significant challenges and opportunities, a great deal of travel, and I am ready to make more space for time with my family, do more of the writing and speaking that I love, and take life a little more slowly. In addition, I believe that emerging priorities will be well served by the talents, vision, and capabilities of the rising generations of Dignity leadership. Serving this movement, this mission, and this community as your Executive Director has been a tremendous privilege, and I will forever be grateful for the trust placed in me over the years. I am proud of what we have accomplished and confident in our future.

My journey with Dignity began in October 1982, when I attended a Dignity Boston liturgy for the first time. I was a twenty-one-year-old recent college grad and had just started my M.Div. program at a Jesuit seminary. I was scared to walk through the doors for that Dignity Mass, but doing so changed the course of my life in unimaginably positive ways. I immediately felt deeply at home, and ever since, Dignity has been my faith community and so much more. It is where I met my wife and most of my closest friends, as well as a community that has provided tremendous support for our family.  It is the place where my vocation has been affirmed and nurtured, and where my faith and spirituality have constantly been deepened and expanded.

I have been honored to serve as your Executive Director for almost nineteen years, and to have held a wide array of volunteer positions with DignityUSA for over twenty-one years before that. During these four decades plus, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with exceptional leaders, including many of you, on such momentous matters as caring for people during the HIV/AIDS epidemic and challenging our church, government, and medical establishment to act with compassion; supporting greater equality for women as well as bisexual, transgender, and nonbinary people; responding to the Halloween/Ratzinger Letter of 1986 and the awful expulsions of so many of our Chapters from Catholic space that followed; dealing with the clergy sexual abuse crisis and attempts to scapegoat gay priests; supporting efforts to expand civil rights protections, including military service and marriage equality; representing our movement to the U.S. State Department during the Obama Administration; helping to found the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics; and participating in multiple interactions with Vatican and Synod leaders, including Pope Francis.

During these decades, DignityUSA has changed to meet new realities, and we have consistently been gifted with leaders with the talents and vision to address them with grace and strength. As we face increasing attacks on our community in civil space, and reluctance to fully affirm LGBTQIA+ people within our church, I believe that we will be blessed with the leadership we need to keep Dignity in the forefront of the challenges ahead.

Someone recently referred to DignityUSA as “the Catholic Stonewall,” a term that resonates deeply for me. Dignity allowed members of the LGBTQIA+ Catholic community and our loved ones to organize, to proclaim that we are beloved by God just as we are and that we deserve full membership in our church and society. We rejected second-class status in our church and demanded unconditional acceptance. We laid the foundation for many of the LGBTQIA+ parish and Catholic college and school ministries that exist today.  Moreover, we launched a global Queer Catholic movement by supporting the development of groups in many countries around the world.

In our chapters and caucuses, we have created and sustained wonderful communities of healing, empowerment, and prophetic witness, both in person and online. These communities have enabled tens of thousands of people to recover from religious trauma and create rich, happy, fulfilling lives consistent with their beliefs and values. We have challenged theological tropes and modeled new ways of living in liberationist community that responds to evolving needs while remaining true to a core mission. We have brought our message to individuals in need and to the highest ranks of the Vatican. We have shared great joy and tremendous sorrow and risen repeatedly to continue the work of the Gospel. I am so proud to have been a part of all that has transpired over the more than forty years I have served in Dignity leadership.

I have been working closely with the Board of Directors and with our Human Resources Committee and a Communications Committee over the past few months to plan for a smooth transition. Details of a search process will be announced soon, and I have agreed to stay on to welcome and help orient our next Executive Director. With so many dedicated, skilled, and talented people connected to our movement, I have every confidence that the Board will select the right person for the time ahead. Please follow upcoming announcements from DignityUSA’s Board to stay informed about the transition process.

Dignity will remain an important part of my life, but I will be stepping back from visible roles for the foreseeable future once a new Executive Director is in place. Our organization has so much still to accomplish, and so many generous and gifted people who are part of it! I am excited to see where we go next.

I want to close this message by expressing my profound gratitude to everyone who has supported me in this work during my tenure. I especially thank the many, many individuals who have shared your personal journeys with me. I have been inspired every day by your stories and have done my best to lift them up. It is your lives, your faith, your struggles, your hopes that I have strived to reflect in my work, and doing this has been a great honor. I have never taken that responsibility for granted.

Each person who is part of DignityUSA is a gift to this movement, to our church, and to the world. Thank you for the amazing opportunity to have led and served for so long. I look forward to all that is to come, and I hope to see many, many of you at our next national gathering in Dublin in July 2027!

With love and gratitude,

Marianne