New director for Office of Worship

Friday, Jan. 19, 2024

SALT LAKE CITY — Lorena Needham, who began this month as director of the Diocese of Salt Lake City’s Office of Worship, has felt a burning commitment to serve God throughout her life since she received the Sacrament of Confirmation in the fifth grade in Burlington, Iowa. 

“From that moment on, I really felt compelled to work for the Church,” said Needham, who attended parochial schools through sixth grade and completed her secondary education at public schools. She then attended Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State) to pursue a bachelor’s degree in music therapy. After two and a half years there, looking for a way to help fund her education, Needham enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. 

While serving, she continued her studies, earning a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a master’s in logistics management from the Air Force Institute of Technology. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, she attended Officer Training School and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. 

Over 23 years in the Air Force, Needham had a career in transportation and logistics in positions ranging from air cargo specialist to chief of passenger policy at The Pentagon. During that time, she also taught for three years at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and began a master’s degree in pastoral ministry from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, Winona, Minn. In 2000 she retired as a lieutenant colonel.  

“It was challenging; it was growth-producing; it was exhausting,” she said of her time in the Air Force. “I’m glad I did it because I got a perspective on how our nation is positioned in the world to promote peace and stability.”

After her discharge Needham spent some time traveling the United States before applying for a volunteer position with the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. She was sent to Holy Trinity, Ala. There, with fellow missionary Julia Viera, she served among the migrant workers of the area.

“They were hungry for the Lord and so we ended up starting a Hispanic ministry in the Archdiocese of Mobile,” she said.

Needham and Viera then served for eight years as volunteer missionaries in the Diocese of Savannah, Ga. Over the years as they worked together, the two women became close friends and Viera’s family became like Needham’s own. So, in 2010, with her own parents deceased and her brothers and sisters scattered across the United States, when Viera’s children invited their mother and Needham to join them in Utah, she had just three questions:

“Do they speak Spanish there? Are there mountains there? Are there four seasons there?”

When they answered in the affirmative, “I said, ‘How can I go wrong? There’d be family and I can continue in the ministries I’ve started with, by God’s grace, so I’m coming.’”

In Utah Needham completed certification as a spiritual director as well as her master’s degree in pastoral ministry. She then entered the diocese’s lay ecclesial ministry program and became the Spanish choir director at St. Marguerite Catholic Church. For five years she served as principal of Saint Marguerite Catholic School in Tooele, guiding the school to its first full accreditation through Western Catholic Education Association. She also helped to double the enrollment and re-invigorate the curriculum, and create a new logo and mascot. 

After leaving St. Marguerite’s, she served as the administrator of liturgy and music at the Cathedral of the Madeleine for five years before accepting her new position.

In her new role, Needham plans to fill a charge given to her by Bishop Oscar A. Solis to encourage joyful worship among the people of God in the diocese.

“He really wants us all to know enough about liturgy and to be thinking of ourselves as ministers of the liturgy so that when the priest says, ‘Lift up your hearts’ that we’re so engaged that we truly lift up our hearts,” she said.

“I’m here to support the bishop when he presides and in ministering the procedures for liturgy, to help parishes in their implementation of those procedures and to help train the ministers who are serving,” she added. 

Needham rarely has free time, but when she does she is usually found in her garage, which she converted into a music studio last year. Time among her guitars, piano and music renews her spirit for the many hours she spends professionally and personally in service to God, as she committed so many years ago.