Mother, daughter share path to ministry for the Episcopal Church

The Rev. Jenn Pilat has unusually strong bonds with her mother: First she followed her mother’s path by becoming a Spanish teacher, then she followed her into ministry for the Episcopal Church.

Pilat is an ordained priest who serves at Saint Anselm's Episcopal Church in Shoreham. Her mother, the Rev. Deacon Ann Pilat, is an ordained deacon who serves in Columbia, South Carolina, where the family is from.

This Mother’s Day they are celebrating their mutual interests and missions, albeit hundreds of miles apart.

“It all goes back to my mom — setting the example of selfless giving and loving ministry, from an early age,” Jenn Pilat said. “She’s been incredibly supportive from the start. You name it and she has been there with her arms open ready to love any ministry, any vocation, any child.”

Pilat, 38, has followed a noteworthy path to ministry. She taught Spanish for 10 years in public schools in South Carolina, while playing and refereeing rugby on the side. She is married, and with her wife has adopted three children of varying ethnic backgrounds.

She is also a newly minted chaplain in the U.S. Navy Reserves, and will minister to members of the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.

Her mother could hardly be prouder.

“She is a phenomenal young lady,” Ann Pilat said. “I’m just tickled to death that she is preaching the word and she’s doing the wonderful things with her congregation.”

She said she sensed her daughter was destined for ministry from a young age. She recalled how at the age of 7 one day Jenn brought a pitcher of water and glasses out to workers fixing a street on a sweltering day in their home city.

“I saw it coming years and years and years ago,” Ann Pilat said. “She’s a phenomenal teacher. She’s kindhearted and that was just a perfect mix for her in the ministry.”

Jenn Pilat grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where Ann Pilat was a single mother also raising a son. The mom was active in the Episcopal Church from the time the daughter was born, they said.

Ann’s full-time job was teaching Spanish in public schools, but for years she also prepared to be officially ordained as a deacon. That finally happened when Jenn was in college.

For her part, Jenn initially did not think she would become a priest — which is a full-time, paid job. She thought she could keep teaching and be involved with the church on the weekends, teaching Sunday school or participating in the choir.

Deep down, “I knew I was called to be a priest and thought I could negotiate with God” and do church work part-time, she said. “That actually doesn’t work, ever … The call to full-time religious life was too much to be avoided.”

When she told her mother she wanted to enter the seminary, “She wasn’t the least bit surprised,” Jenn Pilat said. “Her only word was ‘finally.’”

She attended the Virginia Theological Seminary, was ordained a priest, and served in a facility for elderly people in Connecticut before she was hired at the church in Shoreham in January 2022.

Her mother has visited her there, and twice celebrated Mass with her at Saint Anselm's. “That’s been just life-giving, to serve at the altar together,” Jenn Pilat said.

Another thing they have in common is a natural aptitude for Spanish. Ann Pilat did graduate work in Madrid, Spain, toward her master’s degree in Spanish literature, while Jenn Pilat studied in Chile for a semester during college.

Ann has long worked with Latino immigrants in South Carolina and is deacon for Hispanic ministries for the Episcopal Diocese  of Upper South Carolina. Jenn hopes to expand her ministry to include Latinos near Shoreham in communities including Rocky Point, Riverhead and Port Jefferson Station.

She feels she is thriving in her work, something she constantly thanks her mother for.

“I couldn’t have asked for someone more encouraging,” she said. Having her mother “so devoted to her call … so devoted to serving the underserved, was really what kept me going in my pursuit of a life of ministry and service.”