Dr Pat Jones grew up in the Cardijn movements; her parents were YCW organisers alongside Patrick Keegan. Pat herself was a member of the YCS national team around 1971-2. After degrees in theology, she worked for ten years as director of adult formation in Liverpool Archdiocese.
She was then appointed as assistant general secretary to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, the first woman to hold this role. In 1987, she was an auditor at the Synod on the Laity and addressed the Synod in one of the early sessions. She then served two terms on the Pontifical Council for the Laity from 1990-2000.
Later she was deputy director of CAFOD and worked in other Catholic charities before turning to academic work. Her PhD on how Catholic charities enact Catholic Social teaching was completed at Durham University in 2019.
Latterly she was part of a research team exploring how Catholic culture and theology are implicated in the child abuse crisis in the Church and was the lead author of the research report, The Cross of the Moment.
When time allows, she has been researching the experience of young working- class women in English YCW in the 1940s-70s.