Benkovic gave a personal testimony on her return to Catholicism in 1981 after having been “enticed, totally entranced and bewitched by the voices of the (1970s).”

She spoke of her time at Pennsylvania State University where she paid heed to the voices of the students around her and forgot the truths that had been so carefully indoctrinated into her as a child. “I bought the lie,” she said.

On “emerging from the darkness” and her return to the Church, Benkovic said it was scripture and faith in God that brought her hope, healing, solace and direction in life.

“We end up in sin by beginning to make small sacrifices,” she said; ‘If we’re not careful and not examining ourselves, we begin to make excuses for the way we adopt those sacrifices and we begin to get comfortable with habitual sin.”

“Nothing you can do can eradicate his blessings from you. No sin can take it away from you. He is incapable of loving one of us more than the other; He loves us totally,” she said.

At 3 p.m. conference participants celebrated a Divine Mercy Holy Hour with Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Veneration of the Divine Mercy Image with a procession and the praying of the Divine Mercy Chaplet and Apostle’s Creed. The time of prayer and worship ended with Benediction and a communal singing of “Tantum Ergo.”

To conclude the conference, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley celebrated Mass in honor of Divine Mercy Sunday. In his homily, the cardinal spoke of the events of Holy Week as a love story, and of the tragedy of Judas’ suicide and Thomas’ unbelief.

He spoke on what constitutes discipleship and the responsibility of all Catholics to bear witness to Christ’s resurrection as granting them the opportunity for “a new life, a second chance.”

“True happiness is believing in Jesus and being his disciple,” he said. “It means being free of enslavement to money, power and pleasure” and being “in genuine solidarity, of one heart and one mind,” he said.

In an interview after the conference, a parishioner from Saint Joseph in Kingston and four-year conference attendee, Marie Barry, said the speaker line-up was “fabulous”, particularly citing Caviezel’s talk.

“She is a very real person and she is speaking the way that we feel,” she said of Caviezel.

“I think it is such an inspiration and a joy to see that many Catholic women in one area,” said Barry. “Every year you think it can’t get any better and it does.”

Another conference attendee, Patricia Costello, from Holy Family parish in Duxbury, said that it is so important to get Catholic women together to hear the messages relayed by the day’s speakers.

“We need to hear that and get more people to spread the Church’s message,” she said. “To give resilience, hope and courage to young people.”