Saint Pauls' Episcopal Cathedral >> Hispanic Ministries

About Rev. Canon Mary Moreno-Richardson

The Rev. Canon Mary Moreno-Richardson is the Coordinator for Hispanic Ministry in the Diocese of San Diego. She is also the director of the Guadalupe Art Program and was the first Latina priest ordained in the Diocese of San Diego.

Prior to moving to San Diego, Rev. Mary served at the cathedral center in Los Angeles, and served as Senior Episcopal Chaplain at the Central Juvenile Detention Facility in East Los Angeles. She ministered to 200 to 300 incarcerated teens per week. Using the 12-Steps of recovery, meditation and the arts, Rev. Mary learned so much more from these children than she could ever have imagined. Through their art and stories, she heard the cry of some of the most forgotten children in our society.

Rev. Mary worked with incarcerated and post-incarcerated youth and families. She has worked as a mental health clinician and also facilitated forensic interviews for sexually abused children at the Violence Intervention Program at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, where she educated students on Domestic Violence for USC’s School of Medicine. She is a certified Chemical Dependency Specialist and lectured at the Los Angeles County School of Nursing. She worked as a case-manager and treatment advocate at the AIDS Service Center in Pasadena and as a case-manager for addicted mothers through the First Steps Program in Santa Barbara County. She taught Confident Parenting classes to Spanish-speaking parents for the Santa Barbara County Schools and was the Latino Coordinator for the Multicultural Community Partnership of Santa Barbara County.

Rev. Mary also has worked as a CASA (court appointed special advocates) and she created a youth drug/alcohol prevention program for the County of Santa Barbara. She lectured at the National Conference on Juvenile Justice and the National Latino Conference on HIV/AIDS. Rev. Mary is affiliated with the Task Force for Women in Prison and Children in Crisis, Drug Policy Alliance, the Religion & Domestic Violence Task Force, Faith Communities for Families and Children, and the Bi-national Committee on HIV.

Rev. Mary facilitated a “train the trainer” workshop for the Anglican Diocese of Mexico. Using “DISCOVER”, an HIV Women’s Workshop, she prepared and empowered twenty-five professional women in an HIV prevention seminar and has been invited to return to lecture on domestic violence.

Rev. Mary has also been a long-time advocate against the “War on Drugs”. She was featured on the PBS program, “Religion and Ethics News Weekly” in support of treatment over incarceration for people struggling with addiction.

Rev. Mary is also on the Executive Council Committee on the Status of Women for the national church, where she focuses on the problem of Human Trafficking. She just returned from two weeks in New York, where she was invited as a delegate to the United Nations. Part of a national awareness and education campaign, they have developed special packet that will be distributed to every 7500 Episcopal church. She serves a chaplain for victims in both San Diego County and Baja California, Mexico as part of a emergency response team with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department and the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition. Through the Guadalupe Art Program, she is co-producing Public Service Announcements with actress Brooke Adams and Jamie Donnelly for national distribution through television outlets. These P.S.A’s will educate the public on the issue of trafficking and also, offer in diverse languages, an emergency number for victims to call for help.

More information about the response of the Episcopal Church to the Human Trafficking issue.