Vigil for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Year B)
Fr. Stephen Judd, MM serves in Bolivia; he wrote the following reflection which was published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
Latin America
The history of Maryknoll in Latin America is rich and deep. Our commitment to the promotion of social justice and peace in the region cost several of our missioners their lives during the years of oppression, including Fr. Bill Woods, MM in Guatemala (1976), and Sisters Ita Ford, MM, Maura Clarke, MM and Carla Piete, MM in El Salvador in 1980. Some, like Fr. Miguel D’Escoto in Nicaragua, have served in public roles in support of those who live in poverty. Countless others have accompanied the Central American people in their daily struggles for survival, for social justice, for an end to the violence that destroys their communities; for new life.
Among the particular concerns of Maryknoll in Latin America are poverty, its causes and consequences; migration and refugees; health care, especially holistic care that includes good nutrition and preventative care; access to essential medicines for treatable or curable illness; HIV and AIDS; the rights and dignity of women and children; the response of authorities to the growth in gang violence; mining concessions; just trade agreements; debt cancellation; small and subsistence farming and other work accessible to people who are poor; and environmental destruction.
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Former lay missioner Barb Fraser (Peru) wrote the following reflection, which was published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
Feast of Corpus Christi (Year B)
Fr. Bill Donnelly spent decades in Guatemala; he prepared this reflection on the readings for the Feast of Corpus Christi.
Support the SOA Watch campaign by ordering a limited edition t-shirt
Maryknollers have been actively supporting the SOA Watch campaign to close the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) at Fort Benning, Georgia since 1990, and you can too. Purchase a limited edition t-shirt and support the growth of the movement for justice and self-determination in the Americas.
Guatemala: The violence and the vision
This article by Sr. Ann Braudis, published in the May-June 2015 NewsNotes, relates something of the struggle in Guatemala during recent decades: it reflects on where the majority of indigenous and poor people find themselves today.
Mexico: Ending drug violence from bottom up
April 15 is the anniversary of an unusual and largely unnoticed “citizen uprising” in Cherán, a small indigenous town of 20,000 residents in the state of Michoacán, México.
Brazil: Digging deeper into corruption scandals
Within Brazil, national news programs and newspapers dedicate extensive coverage to several corruption scandals, which has contributed to growing anger toward President Dilma Rousseff and her affiliated Workers Party (PT).
Feast of Pentecost (Year B)
Sr. Euphrasia (Efu) Nyaki, MM, who serves in Brazil, wrote the following reflection which was published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
Feast of the Ascension (Year B)
Sr. Melinda Roper, who serves the people of Darien, Panama, near the border with Colombia, wrote the following reflection.
Brazil: Add your name to petition repudiating prison privatization
The following petition will be delivered to authorities in Brazil. We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, express our vehement opposition to all forms of privatization of the Brazilian prison system…
Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Sr. Carol Marie McDonald serves as a missioner in Central America, most recently in El Salvador.
Third Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Kathy McNeely, who served as a lay missioner in Guatemala and was a member of the Office for Global Concerns’ staff for many years, wrote the following reflection.
SOA Watch Spring Days of Action
School of the Americas Watch is mobilizing this April for its Spring Days of Action (SDOA), April 22-25, 2015.
Holy Thursday (Year B)
Fr. Tom Burns served for many years in poor areas of Lima, Peru.
Palm Sunday (Year B)
Gerry Lee serves as director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. He, his wife and their children lived as a Maryknoll mission family in Venezuela for 10 years in the late 1980s-1990s.
Haiti: Challenges of reconstruction
The following article was prepared by Chris Smith, a Maryknoll Affiliate who is volunteering with the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, and was published in the March-April 2015 NewsNotes.
Central America: Biden Plan is more of the same
The following article was written by Marek Cabrera, the Central America intern for the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, and was published in the March-April 2015 NewsNotes.
Peru: Trade policies fuel violence
The following article was prepared by Alfonso Buzzo, who is an intern with the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns’ Faith-Economy-Ecology project, and was published in the March-April 2015 NewsNotes.