Portland Magazine
October 23, 2023
Jo Cecilio '11 returns to The Bluff to lead the Moreau Center for Service and Justice.
Photo Credit: Chris Brecht
Jo Cecilio ’11, UP’S new director of the Moreau Center for Service and Justice, has lived many lives. She’s been a bartender, a social worker in gang intervention, a bouncer, a bus driver, a high school teacher, and a chaplain. “As long as I’m following where the Holy Spirit leads me, I’ll be fine,” she says, in her easygoing way. Leaving a conversation with her, you’re convinced that this statement is true—she will keep following the Holy Spirit; she will be fine. You’re also convinced that she’ll be an excellent pastoral resident in the Fields dorm, where she’ll be living this year. (There, students will be invited to call her Chaplain Jo.)
When she was a student at UP, working toward a double major in social work and Spanish, she was very involved in Moreau Center work. She claims she became a Spanish major due to a clerical error. It took one class for her to realize she’d walked into an upper-level course that far surpassed her understanding. After class, Jo approached the instructor—the late and much-loved Kate Regan. Jo explained the registrar’s mistake, and Regan asked Jo if she’d be willing to work hard. Jo’s response was “yes,” and with Regan’s help, Jo gained a facility with the language that eventually led to work with an NGO in Nicaragua.
Regan made a lasting impression on Jo, so much so that Jo has a Kate Regan quote tattooed on her left forearm: “God doesn’t place limits on us.” Regan would often follow this statement with: “We place limits on ourselves.” Above the quote on the tattoo is a cresting wave. The reason? Not because Jo is a surfer (though she is that too), but because she feels that Regan came into her life on a “rolling wave of love.”
Jo’s basic hope for the Moreau Center is that it can continue to be a wave of love for UP students, and that she and her team can put that love into action. Ideally, the Moreau Center should be a space where everybody can belong; she firmly believes that we all want to find a place where we can feel known, loved, and served.
This was largely her philosophy when, as a student, she became a founding member of UP’s Gender and Sexuality Partnership, a group that aims to build a supportive community between gay and straight students. It was also the philosophy behind the gang intervention and teen programming work she did in North Portland while working for the Boys and Girls Club. It was what drove her social work in Nicaragua—where she worked with housing authorities to identify people living in La Chureca (city dump) and help them transition to housing as national clean-up efforts began.
For Jo, God is at the center of all of it. She talks about her faith in a way you’d expect from someone earning a PhD in practical theology—comfortably, unpretentiously. In a way that’s easy to relate to. Jo dreams of someday opening a bar in Hawai'i and calling it Theology on Tap. The best ministers, after all, are like bartenders—people who know how to listen. She aspires to offer that attentiveness to the students in her sphere.
Jo accompanied former Georgetown University colleagues to The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination conference. Scholars and creative artists from around the world received an audience with Pope Francis. COURTESY OF JO CECILIO
Jo talks about her career as a series of providential, full-circle moments. Her Holy Cross high school led to her undergraduate and graduate work. She came to UP on a Joe and Helen Allegretti Scholarship, only to discover later that she was teaching the Allegretti’s grandchildren at a high school in Los Angeles. Now she returns to The Bluff, ready to work alongside students in service of a just world. We’re so glad she’s here.
If you are interested in learning more about the Moreau Center for Service and Justice, please email moreaucenter@up.edu.
University of Portland
5000 N. Willamette Blvd.,
Portland, Oregon 97203-5798
503.943.8000
This website uses cookies to track information for analytics purposes. You can view the full University of Portland privacy policy for more information.
