New Black Catholic Ministry coordinator excited to ‘give my gifts back to the Church’

By Natalie Hoefer

When her Nigerian parents gave her the first name “Irorobeje,” the name proved to be fitting.

“It means ‘when you’re making decisions, it can be difficult,’ and that was totally me” when it came to choosing a career, says Irorobeje Crystal Owhoso-Maddox. “I like so many things, and I have so many interests. My parents would poke at me a little and say, ‘You have to pick one thing!’

“When I found out that ‘iroro’ is actually a word that means ‘wisdom,’ I was like, ‘Dad, why didn’t you tell me that?’ Because wisdom helps with discernment.”

After working for several years in various areas—each often leading to new interests—Owhoso-Maddox recently discerned a call to apply for the role of coordinator of archdiocesan Black Catholic Ministry.

She started in the position in July.

‘Give my gifts back to the Church’

Her journey to the role began, in a sense, in 2007, when Owhoso-Maddox, her parents and siblings were welcomed into the full communion of the Church in Covington, Ky.

Previously, the family had worshiped in the Baptist faith tradition. When they moved to the Midwest from the Boston area, one of her father’s sisters asked him what church the family was attending.

“And my dad didn’t have a concrete answer,” says Owhoso-Maddox. “She encouraged him to look into the Catholic faith, and they had conversations and dialogues. So, my dad basically spearheaded the process with our family.”

She was 21 and living on her own at the time. But the family was “really tight-knit and close,” says Owhoso-Maddox, and, unlike her difficulty in making other decisions, “I had no hesitancy on taking this journey with them.”

She moved to Indianapolis in 2014.

For the next 11 years, her jobs ranged from working for Nextdoor.com to Horizon House homeless shelter. That experience stirred in Owhoso-Maddox an interest in social work on behalf of children, which led to work with the City of Indianapolis Department of Business and Neighborhood Services and the Indiana Department of Child Services.

Her desire to help children took a turn toward education. She worked as family and community engagement coordinator for Vision Academy in Indianapolis and was director of the K-12 school and community programs for Marian University in Indianapolis for the last three years.

In one job, Oshowo-Maddox worked with another Black Catholic.

“We kind of were just like, ‘You know, where are the Black Catholics in Indianapolis? Like, it’s just us.’ ”

Around 2021, the two reached out to Pearlette Springer, then-archdiocesan coordinator of Black Catholic Ministry. Owhoso-Maddox volunteered for the ministry and for Springer.

After Springer retired in June of 2023, Owhoso-Maddox continued to assist the archdiocese by helping Catholic Charities Indianapolis-Social Concerns create a series of 10 videos on prominent Black Catholics in 2024 (available at tinyurl.com/BlackCtholicVideos).

“I really admired the work that Dr. Springer did to pave the way for that community and support network for Black Catholics,” says Oshowo-Maddox. “I’ve been basically set up to be successful, … to be able to pour into and give my gifts back to the Church in whatever way that I can.”

Jack of all trades, ‘but now for the Church’

She says she is excited that her new role will provide the opportunity to speak on issues of relevance to Black, African, Caribbean and Creole- and French-speaking Catholics in central and southern Indiana.

“Being able to speak about that freely in a way that is all about unity and sharing the many gifts that we have to bring to the Church—that’s something that I’m really excited about.”

Owhoso-Maddox also looks forward to using the many talents and skills she’s learned through her multiple interests—from community building, cross-cultural communications and event planning to photography, theater and production management.

“What’s that quote? ‘Jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.’ That’s me,” she laughs.

“I get to just put on the thousands of hats that I always put on, but now it’s for the Church specifically, and to bring people to Christ.”

Owhoso-Maddox plans to continue holding events the ministry has offered in the past. But she also has new ideas that call upon her list of skills and interests.

Some ideas are still being developed, like a podcast on Black Catholic history in Indiana with other possible topics included.

Other ideas are already being implemented. She just launched a periodically recurring series of events called Faith, Fellowship & Flow, with three events set for this month ranging from Mass and fellowship to outings to a Christian Hip-Hop concert and a clean comedy show.

‘We can all learn from each other’

There are two other hats Owhoso-Maddox is proud to wear: wife and mother.

After living in Indianapolis for three years, she decided in 2017 that she was “on my way out from Indiana.

“I said, ‘Look, my husband’s not here. Let me just start looking for jobs in California or just anywhere.’ ”

She had a dating app on her phone that she had used from time to time, with no success.

Owhoso-Maddox decided to “just go on [the app] one more time. It was my last hurrah, because I had one foot in Indiana and one foot who knows where.”

And that’s how she met her husband Steve. The two dated for two years and were engaged and married in 2019. With his two children and the couple’s own two children, Oswhoso-Maddox is the mother of four, ages 3, 5, 11 and 16. She is in the process of registering herself and the two youngest children with Holy Angels Parish in Indianapolis, whose school the two children attend.

The parish’s Black Catholic history is fitting, given Owhoso-Maddox’s new role for the archdiocese.

The official mission of the archdiocese’s Black Catholic Ministry is “to identify and foster the rich diversity of Black Catholics of African descent [and to] empower the members so they can evangelize their brothers and sisters to take on the spirit of Jesus Christ.”

“That’s just right on the nose,” says Owhoso-Maddox. “I don’t think that ethnic culture should be disregarded. It needs to be elevated, and in fact illuminated. They each bring their own gifts to the table, and their own form of spirituality, and we can all learn from each other.”
 

(For more information on the archdiocese’s Black Catholic Ministry, contact Irorobeje Crystal Owhoso-Maddox at 317-261-3381 or iowhosomaddox@archindy.org. For more information on the October Faith, Fellowship & Flow events, go to tinyurl.com/0926events and scroll down to the General Announcements.) †