By M-C Scarlett
Special to The Texas Catholic

At the heart of every parish are its leaders. The staff and volunteers who are the first to arrive and the last to leave every Mass, event, and fundraiser. At Prince of Peace Catholic Community in Plano, one such employee truly exemplified a life of service.

From 1991 until 2022, Kay Elliott served her parish first as the Director of Family and Children’s Religious Education and the Director of Safe Environment. As a founding parishioner and employee, learning about the faith was key to Elliott’s leadership.

“I certainly learned a lot, working in the parish, a lot about our faith,” Elliott said. “I always tell people: the disciples didn’t know it all and we don’t either.”

Elliott is certainly no stranger to adaptation and change. Although raised Methodist, Elliott converted to her husband’s lifelong faith of Catholicism. She described her conversion as the “best decision I ever made.”

Elliott spent six years working at a steel company, and then stayed at home to raise her children. While her corporate experience prepared her for the structure of parish ministry, some aspects of her role required new skills.

“When you’re working with families, and people are coming from so many different backgrounds and cultures and experiences, we have to know how to work with all of that —where you don’t necessarily have that angle in the corporate world,” Elliott said.

As a founding member, Elliott has witnessed the increasing diversity in the parishioners at Prince of Peace Catholic Community.

“When we first started out, we were very small. And just looking back through the years, I can see how the parish has grown not just in numbers, but we are much more multicultural now than what we were when we started,” Elliott said. “I think that’s a tremendous blessing for all of us.”

The diversity of the Prince of Peace community extends beyond the cultural — the parish fosters an environment of inclusion for children of all abilities. One of Elliott’s passion projects was the special education program.

“We have a faith formation class for children with special needs and there’s not very many parishes in the diocese that have those,” Elliott said. “It was a challenge to get it started and to keep it going, to be able to get the volunteers to staff it.”

The staff, volunteers and parents persevered and created a thriving program that has pulled children experiencing blindness, deafness, autism, ADHD and many other disabilities from across the metroplex.

“I’ve seen kids who’ve transitioned out of that class actually become part of other things that go on in the parish. Some of them, if they’re old enough, have served as acolytes, they help as ushers, we had one girl who played violin at Mass,” Elliott said.

Through the years, Elliott has inspired other Prince of Peace community members. In particular, Father Tom Cloherty, who served as pastor from 2010 until 2021, emphasized her dedication to her position.

“What I noticed about her is it was never a job for her, it was always a passion,” Father Cloherty said. “It was a passion of making sure that the children had an experience of faith that was more than just academic….”

Father Cloherty noted that she went above and beyond expectations in several ways. She personally trained the religious education teachers and even wrote her own curriculum.

“She put her whole self into her service to the community at Prince of Peace,” he said.

After 31 years, Elliott feels “blessed” and “grateful for the opportunity” to have served Prince of Peace. Her legacy of servant-leadership will doubtless impact the church community for years to come.