The Very Rev. Miguelina Howell, who serves as dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut, was elected as the tenth bishop of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts on November 15 on the first ballot.
“They’re clearly committed to God’s mission,” she said about the diocese. Pending canonically required consents, she will be consecrated on April 25.
Howell is excited to hit the ground running and build on the good work that has already been happening. “The diocese is healthy, spiritually grounded, and blessed with bishops who have been intentional,” she said.
But she also wants to figure out how things can be improved, as well as acknowledging that the world has changed and the church needs to respond to that. “How can we revise our structures? The way we used to do church is contextual to the way we used to do ministry,” she said. “My ministry throughout my journey has been characterized by creativity, collaboration, and efficiency.”
It’s important to her that the diocese meet the needs of today, both in its local environment but also in dealing with broader national turmoil. “We don’t want to be chaplains to empire,” she said.
One thing that impressed her was the diocese’s commitment to all of God’s people. When she was participating in meet-and-greets at Christ Church Cathedral in Springfield, she had a long conversation with a man who was housing insecure.
“This place has welcomed me,” he told her. He was doing his laundry at the cathedral drop-in center, which provides assistance for those in need. “It was very moving,” she said.
Howell thinks her experience in Hartford, a very diverse, urban environment, will help her to understand Western Massachusetts, which has several cities that are demographically similar.
But it also has the most rural parts of the state, something she also knows about. Howell is from Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic, but her first positions as a priest were in rural parts of that country. “That really shaped my understanding of ministry,” she said.
As in other parts of the country, rural Massachusetts is struggling with an aging population and a clergy shortage. Mission is important to her, but the demographic realities of the region are unavoidable. She is pleased, however, by the good ministries she sees already occurring, and she wants to build relationships with clergy and laity on how to strengthen their existing work.
“Growth is not just numeric. There’s so many creative ways in engaging in God’s mission,” she said. She wants to make sure the church is not narrowing its audience. “The church is called to provide spaces for all generations to feel at home.”
One of her goals is to see how she can help bring the people doing similar ministries together and create a more cohesive approach. She wants to strengthen connections between different Latino ministries, which are spread throughout the diocese. And she wants to make sure the diocese is reaching out to Latinos who aren’t Episcopalian. “Those are our neighbors,” she said.
Western Massachusetts is home to many colleges and universities, including the state’s largest, the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Western Massachusetts is fertile ground for campus ministry,” she said. She hopes to be able to bring together the people who are already doing campus ministry work to create a more synthetic diocesan strategy. “I met God in a more concrete way as a young adult.”
She previously served as the Associate Program Officer for Young Adult Ministries and Leadership Recruitment at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, and young adult ministry remains important to her.
Howell was ordained to the diaconate in 2001 by Bishop Julio Cesar Holguin-Khoury and to the priesthood in 2002 by Bishop William Jones Skilton, in the Diocese of the Dominican Republic. She has been dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford since 2016. She previously served parishes in the Dioceses of Newark and the Dominican Republic.
She is a graduate of the Centro de Estudios Teológicos, an Episcopal seminary in Santo Domingo that trains people for ministry across Latin America, and is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist trained at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña.
The Diocese of Western Massachusetts encompasses the five western counties of Massachusetts: Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire. It has 50 congregations and approximately 10,000 members.
The two other candidates in the Western Massachusetts election were the Rev. Susan Fortunato, rector of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, New York, and the Very Rev. Dr. Marcus George Halley, chaplain to the college and dean of spiritual and religious life at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut.
Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
