About

Sr. Ana María Pineda, RSM, STD, is a member of the leadership team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, West Midwest, and is a tenured faculty member in the religious studies department at Santa Clara University, where she has taught for more than 20 years. 

She was born in El Salvador, Central America, and migrated to the US with her parents when she was two. Starting as an elementary teacher, much of her ministry has revolved around some aspect of Hispanic ministry and theology.

She was co-director of the Office of Hispanic Ministry and Hispanic Consultant to the Diocesan Catechetical Office in the Diocese of San Jose and a faculty member and director of the Hispanic Ministry Program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago for 10 years.  She also served as the director of the Graduate Pastoral Ministries Program at Santa Clara University between 1999-2005. She was instrumental in promoting the earliest Hispanic Church dialogue in the national Encuentros of lay ministers and bishops.

With fellow Hispanic theologians, she contributed early on in the newly established Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States (ACHTUS) and served as its President in 2000. Pineda was a member of the committee that created the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI), which supports Latino/as in theological doctoral studies.  

She is the author of Romero and Grande, Companions on the Journey (Lectio Publishing, 2016), about the friendship between Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was declared a saint in 2018, and Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande, who was beatified in 2020. Both are martyrs of El Salvador.

Pineda holds an MA in Theology from Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, Ill.; a Doctorate in Ministry candidate at Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Calif.; and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, Pastoral/Applied Theology, from Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain.