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Diocesan Tribunal hires new judge

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
(Email Katie)

After working in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for 28 years, Anne Kirby was welcomed at the beginning of August to the Diocese of Sioux City as a judge in the Tribunal.

In Oklahoma City, Kirby served as a judge in their first instance Tribunal for the past five years, and prior to that she spent 20 years as a pastoral associate at St. Patrick Parish in Oklahoma City.

She said her years of pastoral experience in a parish have “made me sensitive to the power and the healing of the marriage tribunal work.”

“It is not a job well-suited for a young person in the sense that you have the academic knowledge but you haven’t been tempered by the dealings within a parish – the deaths, the loss, the grief, the joy,” said Kirby. “You don’t get that firsthand here in the office. You don’t find a lot of young people doing this work.”

For the past three years, she has had a unique opportunity to work on the canonization cause for Father Stanley Rother, a priest of the Oklahoma City Archdiocese sent in 1968 to work in a Guatemala mission supported by the Oklahoma local church.

“It is a rare chance to work on a canonization cause,” said Kirby. “His life, even if he isn’t declared a saint, from what I learned was very inspiring. It makes you put everything in perspective about the call.”

Kirby was born in Michigan and moved to Florida when she was 10. She attended Catholic schools and graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in sociology. She earned a master’s degree in pastoral ministry from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Mo., while working in a parish.

After working in parish ministry for many years, Kirby was encouraged to attend canon law school. She went to St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, where she received her canon law license and a master’s in canon law.

She attended canon law school with Father Michael Erpelding, adjutant judicial vicar in the Diocese of Sioux City Tribunal, and they had stayed in contact. She said he was the “driving force” that brought her to Sioux City.

Because of the difference in courts in Oklahoma City and Sioux City, Kirby will now be able to serve in the first and second instance courts as a judge.

“This is a chance to exercise the law in a different way than I had the opportunity to in Oklahoma City,” she said. “I am excited about doing that.”

Kirby said that although it was hard to leave a diocese where she has many connections, things fell into place for her to come to Sioux City.

“I am looking forward to creating connections that are critical to serving the people,” said Kirby.

However, she does have some family connections in the diocese. Her mother’s family has lived in the Whittemore area for many years and her mother’s cousins still live in Whittemore. Father Jim Fandel was her mother’s first cousin.