Our world and church grapple with challenges old and new. These challenges require creativity, courage, and resilience—traits embodied by our first protest in Georgia twenty-five years ago. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis wrote, “each new generation must take up the struggles and attainments of past generations, while setting its sights even higher. This is the path. Goodness, together with love, justice and solidarity, are not achieved once and for all; they have to be realized each day” (11). 

As we gather each year in Washington, D.C., we do so in solidarity with all who have committed themselves to the work of justice. We do so with the acknowledgement that this work is never done, and that we are called, as Pope Francis reminds us, to continually reach higher in pursuit of a more just church and world.