Osman receives papal honor

Pope Leo greets Helen Osman and her husband, John Osman, on the day she was invested as a dame of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Sylvester Sept. 1. A privilege of the honor is that she is now eligible to attend Mass on horseback in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. (Courtesy)

The honor recognizes her decades of leadership in Catholic media worldwide.

Though she doesn’t expect ever to use the benefit, Helen Osman is now eligible to attend Mass on horseback in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. However, she’s not a horse rider, and cannot quite figure out how that would work anyway.

Pope Leo XIV invested Osman, former president of SIGNIS World and the Catholic Media Association, as a dame of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Sylvester Sept. 1. The ceremony took place in the office of Dr. Nataša Govekar, director of the Dicastery for Communication’s Theological-Pastoral Department.

Osman served two consecutive terms as president of SIGNIS, from 2017 to 2026. In 2022, Pope Francis appointed her a consultor to the Dicastery for Communication, and in April 2026, Pope Leo named her as a member of the dicastery.

Upon receiving the honor, Osman said, “I am deeply humbled that the Holy Father would grant me this honor. My goal is always to use the gifts God has given me in service to his Kingdom — may the glory always be for him!”

The Order of St. Sylvester is one of five papal orders of knighthood. The Order of St. Sylvester was established in 1841 and reorganized in 1905; Pope John Paul II opened the order to women in 1994.

Osman believes she may have been nominated for the honor by someone in the Dicastery for Communications, especially since she was presented her certificate at the Vatican, while she was in Rome on pilgrimage.

“It’s intended to recognize the professional contributions of lay people toward the mission of the church. And it can include non-Catholics, which I appreciated,” she told the Catholic Journalist.

“I really was touched by it because I think it’s a recognition of not just my effort, but I think those of us in communications, that this is an important contribution to the mission of the church in attempting to not just communicate the good news of the Gospel, but really working in the world, attempting to promote the common good,” Osman said.

She has had an extensive career working in Catholic communications, including as diocesan editor and communications director and as chief communications officer for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. That work included efforts to organize communications plans and logistics for papal trips. Osman now runs Greater Wings, which provides strategic planning and implementation and media relations, among other services, particularly for nonprofits. She served as president of the Catholic Press Association, 2004-07, and received the St. Francis de Sales Award in 2012.

Osman’s work over the years brought her into contact with SIGNIS, the global organization whose mission is to “engage with media professionals and support Catholic Communicators to help transform our cultures in the light of the Gospel by promoting human dignity, justice and reconciliation,” according to its website.

It is an association of the lay faithful authorized by the Vatican, with statutes under the purview of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. “It’s intended to support the work of professional Catholic communicators, whether they’re working inside the church or in the secular world, which is an interesting aspect of the association because in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world, its membership is really only those who work inside the church,” Osman said. In North America, the Catholic Media Association is an organizational member, working mostly with those already in Catholic communications. But in Korea, for example, there is a SIGNIS chapter within the Korean Broadcasting System, similar to PBS, the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.

Osman said she saw the dynamics of bringing together people from different fields in communication to work as Catholics to address a major issue. “That is what the Vatican is doing right now around artificial intelligence. It’s not just that Pope Leo wrote an encyclical, which is amazing in and of itself. But in May, (the Vatican) brought together a bunch of people, and I was invited as president of SIGNIS, to hear a full day of presentations. And I’m not sure if any of the presenters were Catholic.

“It was obvious from their presentations that they did not feel like they had to align themselves with the creed of the Catholic Church,” she said. “But it was also extremely obvious they were so grateful to be able to be there and to talk about their concerns about AI and some of the things that they were doing with AI to succeed within this context of an institution that really has no political power, if you will, nor political ideology.”

In various countries, SIGNIS works in a lot of different communications efforts, including cinema juries, media literacy and journalism training. She said a lot of her time as SIGNIS president focused on “keeping the wheels on the bus” because of fallout from the COVID pandemic and restructuring of the communications department in Rome. Funding for a lot of programming and initiatives dried up and needs to be replaced. She is gratified that the Hilton Foundation, which as one of its focuses supports women religious around the world, is supporting a program for Africa, Asia and Latin America, to help amplify the work the sisters are doing for people.

Gunty is associate publisher and editor of Catholic Review Media in Baltimore.