WASHINGTON — In a crowded room on The Catholic University of America’s campus June 24, a renowned biblical scholar urged hundreds of young women to embrace their femininity — and let it change the world.

Mary Healy, one of only three women ever to serve on the Pontifical Biblical Commission, addressed those attending the 2026 GIVEN Forum, a leadership conference for women between the ages of 21 and 35. Femininity is not a hindrance to leadership, Healy told the attendees, but a valuable gift.

It was a message that attendees might be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. Today’s discourse around womanhood tends to be dominated by secular feminist accounts that tell women their gifts are largely indistinct from men’s and reactionary movements that tell women their femininity is wholly incompatible with leadership in society.

Speakers at the GIVEN Forum, however, repeatedly told attendees that their “feminine genius,” as St. John Paul II called it, is their unique strength and should be present in every sector of society.

Healy’s speech was interspersed by the soft cooing of babies and the quiet babbling of toddlers whose faces dotted the perimeter of the room. These young participants were attended to by their mothers, by nuns, and by leading pro-life activists and businesswomen, all of whom were implicitly living out the Pontiff’s call: to love and to humanize.

According to Sister of Life Bethany Madonna, one of the founding members of GIVEN, that’s a calling that the annual event seeks to amplify — and one that young women today desperately need help to follow.

“There’s things for teenagers; there’s things for college women; there’s things for those preparing for marriage,” Sister Bethany said of the speakers, workshops and mentorship offered at GIVEN. “There is a crying need for [young] women to be invested in, to be formed, to be seen, and to allow their gifts to flourish and then be unleashed into the Church and the world.”

Unleashing Women’s Gifts

The GIVEN Forum took place this year from June 24 to June 28. A leadership summit for Catholic young women, GIVEN aims to form the next generation of women leaders, according to the GIVEN Institute’s website.

Hundreds gathered to hear speeches and panels covering topics from self-care to understanding one’s specific gifts. There were also opportunities for spiritual and career formation with both lay and religious coaches on-site.

The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, a group that represents more than 100 women religious congregations, came up with the idea for a young women’s leadership conference in 2015, according to Sister Bethany. They submitted the idea to the Hilton Foundation and were awarded a grant to help them create GIVEN, which held its first forum in 2016.

“It was supposed to be a onetime event,” she explained. “We had about 300 women from all the United States; all 50 states were represented. After the event, it was very clear that God wanted this.”

GIVEN was founded with a mission to put Pope St. John Paul II’s teaching on the feminine genius into action. In his 1995 “Letter to Women,” John Paul II spoke of the need for women “to be present and active in every area of life — social, economic, cultural, artistic, and political” — in order that the world might become a “civilization of love.” Women, the Pontiff said, have a calling to love and to humanize that makes their contributions uniquely powerful.

Eliza Monts, a 27-year-old author and content creator from Charleston, South Carolina, attended the GIVEN Forum for the first time this year after hearing rave reviews from friends. What she experienced, Monts said, has impacted the way she views her own vocation.

“This conference is not meant for women who are content sitting on the sidelines,” Monts said. “It’s meant for women who have the drive, the passion, and the circumspection to see a need in the Church — and by the Church, we don’t just mean parishes, but every human and the needs of every human — to see that need, to recognize their gifts can fill it, and go forth and do that.”

The Feminine Genius in Every Vocation

One of the hallmarks of the forum is emphasizing the various ways women can incorporate their feminine genius into their work and life. Part of this emphasis lies in GIVEN’s mentorship program.

Rita Johnson, a Michigan-based wholistic wellness coach and mother, attended GIVEN for the first time this year as a mentor. While at the conference, Johnson met with young women and helped them create “action plans,” a project each GIVEN participant develops to share her God-given talents with the Church and the world.

Getting to surround herself with other women looking to be filled with the Holy Spirit was one of the most memorable experiences of the conference, according to Johnson.

“I think spending so much time really orienting the women to allowing themselves to be loved, and especially in a posture of receptivity, really does tie into who we are as women in our feminine genius,” Johnson said. “That way, we can be a vehicle to the rest of the world to really live out our motherly vocation — which isn’t just physical, but also spiritual.”

Though the call to motherhood may not be physical for all women, it can present itself in a myriad of ways, as was shown at the GIVEN Forum. Women of all ages gathered to mentor younger women. Religious sisters pitched in to care for energetic children while their mothers listened to a lecture. Businesswomen spoke on panels about the importance of bringing a motherly love to their workplace.

“It’s so critically important for us to remain focused on that as women, being called to live in the world, being called to live out these missions in a way that evangelizes other hearts,” Johnson said. “Our feminine genius lends itself to being able to mother and walk alongside others in a very unique way.”

Monts said that she found GIVEN’s mission to amplify and commission women’s leadership in the Church and beyond inspirational. Reflecting on this, she cited Pope Leo XIV’s recent decision to appoint two women to prominent roles in the Roman Curia. The Pope named Maria Montserrat (Montse) Alvarado, a laywoman and EWTN News’ president and COO, who serves on the GIVEN Institute’s board, as prefect of the Dicastery for Communication on June 2; and Salesian Sister Alessandra Smerilli as prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development on June 30.

“As I saw those, I was so thrilled, and I also was not surprised,” Monts said. “[Pope Leo] has the kind of common sense to acknowledge that women are no less capable of bringing important gifts and leadership skills to the Church than men are.”

Femininity and the Pro-Life Movement

There is no issue that requires love and humanization more than the pro-life movement, according to anti-assisted-suicide advocate Amanda Achtman. A GIVEN alumna who spoke at this year’s forum, Achtman shared how the example of the women at the foot of the cross inspires her in her work to end euthanasia in Canada, her home country.

“[They were] women steadfast in the face of suffering and death,” Achtman told the Register. “I think there’s something about the feminine charism, to abide the difficulty with patience and endurance, that is attractive in the tenderness it brings and in the way that it humanizes the culture.”

The first day of the 2026 GIVEN Forum fell on the fourth anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, a Supreme Court case that ended guaranteed access to abortion.

Achtman said that the pro-life cause is far from won. In her home country, one-in-20 deaths is caused by euthanasia, which was federally legalized in 2016. In the United States, 14 states have legalized medically assisted dying, with 16 weighing the issue now.

The value of conferences like GIVEN, which commission women to use their talents for the betterment of society and the advancement of the Church, according to Achtman, is the sense of community it fosters.

“A lot of what gives my work — and life — energy is engagement with the person before me, including many with whom I disagree,” Achtman said. “Having a heart for the person where you insist on their goodness cannot be anything but a joyful encounter, because many people are startled by the realization that they are loved, especially by a stranger.”

It’s these distinctly feminine acts of love despite difficulty that, Achtman said, have the power to make a real difference.

Sister Bethany shared a similar message when discussing her work as a Sister of Life, ministering to women who are weighing abortion.

A woman would go to pray outside of an abortion facility near the Sisters of Life convent in Arizona every Wednesday for years. A young woman who went for an abortion noticed her and brushed off the woman in prayer. Several years later, the young woman became pregnant again but decided against having another abortion. Unsure of where to turn for support, she remembered that woman in prayer outside of the business.

“She went to that very clinic — and who’s standing outside, by herself, praying the Rosary, but the same woman, three years later,’” Sister Bethany recounted. “She walked up to her and said, ‘You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I came here three years ago and had an abortion and I’m pregnant again. Can you help me?’ And that woman drove her to our convent, and we walked through the pregnancy with her.”

Though the work of the pro-life movement is far from over, attendees of the GIVEN Forum 2026 reflected on the most integral part of advocacy and women’s leadership: the feminine call to love and to humanize others, despite difficulty. It’s this firm foundation in the Church’s call to women that sets the GIVEN Forum apart.

“It’s not just a four-or five-day conference,” Achtman said. “It echoes throughout the women’s lives, vocations and ministries. What we receive here, what I’ve received at GIVEN, has empowered me to give the experience of excellence, of beauty, and of Christ to others.”