In launching her afternoon keynote speech, “The Smallest Thing – The Greatest Love” at the annual Catholic Women’s Conference, Diana Marie Wehbe lightened the room with a playful jab at what she called “sour-faced Catholics.” Mass, she reminded the female audience, should leave parishioners beaming, not brooding. Within minutes, nary a soul in the audience wasn’t smiling or laughing.

Wehbe, coordinator for confirmation and a youth minister at St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church in Dana Point, California, seamlessly wove humor throughout her profound testimony of leaving behind sin and hedonism to become canonically espoused to Christ as a lay woman. The decision, she told the crowd, was “the best thing I have ever done in my entire life.”

Wehbe explained how, 10 years ago on Valentine’s Day, she was working in radio. She and her co-worker and crush were waiting in her car outside a nightclub. “I’m like, ‘This is the day, it’s Valentine’s, he’s going to tell me his feelings for me, and we're going to be together,’” she explained.

Instead, Wehbe’s crush told her he was interested in someone else. “He says the following words to me,” Wehbe said. “I will never forget these words: ‘Diana, you have a heart for the world. You have a heart for all of humanity. It would be incredibly selfish for me, or any guy, to ever be with you, because then I would be taking someone whose heart was made for the world and binding it to one person.’”

While she was initially mortified and indignant, those words proved prophetic. Two years ago, after searching for “the perfect husband,” Wehbe attended Mass with her then-boyfriend; the homily was about vocations, and how some people are called to religious life and some to marriage. Wehbe then decided to test the waters and take an official six-month celibacy vow.

“So I show up, I've got my vows. I'm like, ‘We're going to see what God does with these six months; maybe he'll send someone and I’ll get married, maybe he’ll call me to religious life,’” said Wehbe, who was there with her spiritual director, a priest, and her best friend. “Father begins to do something totally off script. He starts to say words like ‘espoused,’ ‘forever,’ ‘bride … ’ And I thought, ‘Well I better say something to him. I just came in here to make a six-month vow and see what happens.’”

Wehbe said she sensed God’s grace, a “gentle breeze in my heart” and a whisper: “Isn’t this what you want?”

“I said, ‘Yes, Lord, this is what I want; this is what I’ve always wanted, but I've been looking in all the wrong places with all the wrong people,” Wehbe said.

Wehbe also related how, last spring, her father died after a long illness. Though Wehbe’s mother had raised her and her brother Catholic, her father had been atheist for decades. “My mom said to me one day, ‘Diana, your father will return to the faith because of you. I just know it. Something about you is going to connect with him.’”

It would prove to be another prescient remark. After being diagnosed with a rare, incurable disease, Wehbe’s father returned to his faith, which Wehbe credits to her mother’s prayers. “What she did have to offer, the consistency of that in the midst of her suffering, in the midst of basically bringing her children to the Lord and her husband to the Lord all on her own, would bear so much fruit in my family,” she said. Before passing away last March, Wehbe’s father, whom she described as an angry man for much of her life, “suffered joyfully,” she said. “This man had a conversion. In the process of this conversion, he became the dad I remember having when I was a little, tiny girl: so fun and so gentle and so kind.”

Though praying the rosary together as a family, or a mother whispering prayers as she goes about her day may appear to be small acts, they hold the power to bring about life-changing grace.

“I heard a story from a priest once,” Wehbe said. “A young boy died, and he was supposed to go to hell. He was at his judgment, and our Lord is standing there, and Satan comes and says, ‘Yeah that one’s mine.’ And Our Lady shows up with a scroll, and she opens the scroll in front of Jesus, and she says, ‘This one's mine. These are all the rosaries his mom’s prayed for him. He’s mine.’

“Do not stop praying for your children, because you don't know what treasure you're storing up in heaven. You don't know through your tears, one Hail Mary, two Hail Marys, three Hail Marys, what that's doing for your family members.

“In these small moments where we lean into our prayer life, God is going to lead us.”

While Wehbe’s delivery sparked plenty of laughter, her message also moved some to tears and, at its conclusion, drew thunderous applause from women united in their faith and their roles as mothers, wives, and children of God.

For Sandy Seidel, a member of Sacred Heart Cathedral in San Angelo, fellowship with others in the faith has been a draw to her since the conference started nine years ago. “There’s an importance in networking and being in relationship through fellowship,” she said. “I think it’s a reality check seeing your faith put into action. And, also, you see the trials and you see the triumphs” that the speakers endured to embrace their relationship with God.

Cenny Shepperd Flores, a member of Holy Angels Parish in San Angelo, said she also comes to the conference each year for the fellowship, and added, “It’s like a breath of fresh air and motivation.”

In 2016, JoAnn Turner co-founded the Heart of JMJ Foundation, which each year organizes the conference. This year’s event brought in about 450 women, a slight decrease from last year, but many of whom had never attended previously, she said. “I think their friends invite them,” she said. “Every year I tell people, ‘Come back and bring your friends.’”

This year’s theme, “The Smallest Thing – The Greatest Love” was decided two years ago, Turner said. Asked about its fitting message for the current times, Turner said simply, “That’s the Holy Spirit.”

The conference talks are designed to be centered on the women who attend, she said, adding, “They can’t go out and save the world, but they can change their world.”Becca Nelson Sankey is a freelance writer and photographer in San Angelo.


Photo: Diana Marie Wehbe was a keynote speaker at the 2025 Catholic Women's Conference in San Angelo Sept. 12–13. Photo by Becca Sankey Nelson.