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.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns joins over 40 U.S.-based faith, human rights, foreign policy, humanitarian, immigrant rights and border-based civil society organizations in a statement to express deep concern over the Trump Administration’s latest actions on Central America including the wholesale cutoffs of assistance to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns condemns President Trump's emergency declaration and calls on Congress to enact immigration policies that protect human rights.
We call on Congress to reverse the course of the Trump administration.
A call for compassion and transformation.
As the leadership of the Maryknoll Sisters, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers and the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, we denounce the cruel and immoral “zero-tolerance” immigration policy enacted by the Trump Administration which has resulted in the separation of over 2,300 children from their parents, the criminal prosecution of anyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, and severe restrictions on asylum applications.
The Trump administration announced plans to renegotiate NAFTA.
Sister Roselei Bertoldo, ICM, offered the following comments on the concerns of women and indigenous communities in the Amazon just days before traveling to Rome to participate in the Synod on the Amazon.
Ask your Representative to enforce the labor laws set out in CAFTA and to suspend military aid to Honduras.
Maryknoll Affiliate Claudia Samayoa and fellow Guatemalan Jose Martinez face false accusations of criminal behavior by the president of Guatemala's Supreme Court for speaking out against corruption and impunity.
June 28, 2019, marked the tenth anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and unleashed a new chapter of violence in the Central American nation. Now, a decade later, Hondurans join waves of Central American refugees in fleeing the drug and gang violence that is plaguing their nation. The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns joined 13 organizations in issuing the following statement to the governments of the United States and Honduras on June 27.
Download our two-page bulletins called One Amazon, Many Voices
Take action for Honduras on the tenth anniversary of the coup.
Support the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019
Send a message to President Trump.
Write to U.S. Sec. of State Mike Pompeo.
The drumbeat for war has been growing louder in recent weeks. How alarmed should we be?
Listen to voices on the border.
In the past few months, Guatemala has seen dangerous efforts to rollback key human rights protections instituted after the Guatemalan Civil War.
CIDSE, an international alliance of Catholic social justice organizations which includes the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, issued the following statement after the collapse of a mine waste dam in Brunadinho, Brazil.
Speak out against the Honduran government’s attacks on human rights and environmental defenders.
Since February 7, protests have erupted across Haiti over allegedly misappropriated government funds and a massive devaluation of the Haitian currency, the gourde.
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.
Fr. Bill Donnelly spent decades in Guatemala; he prepared this reflection on the readings for the Feast of Corpus Christi.
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.
Sr. Melinda Roper, who serves the people of Darien, Panama, near the border with Colombia, wrote the following reflection.
Sr. Carol Marie McDonald serves as a missioner in Central America, most recently in El Salvador.
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.
Fr. Tom Burns served for many years in poor areas of Lima, Peru.
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.
The following reflection was prepared by Sr. Efu Nyaki, who works with women in Brazl.
Fr. Steve Judd, who has ministered to the Andean people for many years, writes this reflection on the readings for the second Sunday of Lent.
One of the greatest contemporary battles that we face today is the struggle to protect our natural world, which many indigenous cultures affectionately refer to as “Mother Earth,” which includes the interconnected web of living creatures that sustains and nurtures the balance of all life on this planet.
Kathy McNeely served as a Maryknoll lay missioner in Guatemala, and worked for many years in the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Sr. Ellen McDonald, who served as a Maryknoll missioner in Panama, wrote the following reflection; this piece is also published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
The following reflection was written by Maggie Fogarty, a former Maryknoll lay missioner in Bolivia, and is published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
The following reflection was prepared by Maryknoll lay missioner Joanne Blaney and published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B.
