Deb Organ began her ministerial life by learning how to run the unpredictable boiler in her home parish in Milwaukee, WI, at the age of 15.  Facilitating spaces of warmth and light has continued to be a passion throughout her life.  She holds a BSW from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, an MSW from St. Catherine/University of St. Thomas in St. Paul MN, and a DMin in Preaching from the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, MO.

Deb has been and continues to be formed in ministry by husband of 29 years and their five children, ranging in age from 26 to 19.  She learned and learns what Church is and can be from the hundreds of Spanish-speaking families that she has encountered in cross-cultural ministry in four US dioceses and two Mexican ones over the past thirty-five years. She also taught homiletics for the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul MN 2001 to 2008. Deb is currently the Pastoral Associate and Mental Health Clinician at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Minneapolis, MN and teaches Theology and coordinates Masters level ministry formation at St. Catherine University in St. Paul MN.  She also is part of the teaching team, offering a systematics theology course, for the Spanish Pastoral Ministry Certificate Program at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul MN.

The face of God has been revealed to her in many times and places, in many lives and experiences.  Deb has been invited to share in the preaching ministry in many of the parishes and other organizations she has served, and enjoys a longtime collaboration with the Dominicans of the Central Province in the United States, as well as with the pastoral team for the Tzotsil Mayan communities of the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. Deb is currently working on the intersections between culture, faith/theology and trauma in her academic and her pastoral life.  In her role as Pastoral Associate, ten years ago she established a professional mental health practice at the parish in the attempt to eliminate access barriers faced by recent Latino immigrants seeking mental health services, and to provide culturally aware cross-cultural clinical services in Spanish.  The practice now includes four clinicians and a lamentably long waiting list for the free services.  Listening to the immigrants’ stories of unimaginable trauma often accompanied by unrelenting courage and deep faith keeps her centered in life and ministry, and keeps alive her belief that hope is real and durable, and can be nurtured anywhere.