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.
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.
The words and actions of Jair Bolsonaro as president-elect and on his first day as president paint a dark picture for Brazil.
Maryknoll Father Frank Breen reports on his visit to El Paso, Texas in December, where he met up with Maryknoll Father Bill Donnelly of St. Patrick Parish. Together they toured some of the shelters for migrants and refugees
Possible shutdown solutions and a moral response to migrants and refugees.
Praying with the Amazon in Advent
Seeking asylum is a human right.
Maryknoll Lay Missioner Peg Vámosy writes about celebrating the canonization of Archbishop Romero with her parish in Monte San Juan, El Salvador on the Maryknoll Lay Missioners website.
Catherine “Kitty” Madden reports on the crisis in Nicaragua. Madden has lived and worked in Nicaragua since 1986, some of that time as a Maryknoll Lay Missioner and many years as a Maryknoll Affiliate.
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.
The following reflection, written by former lay missioner Larry Rich, was published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
The following reflection was prepared by Kathy McNeely, who was a lay missioner in Guatemala and then served with the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Fr. Dennis Moorman has served as a missioner in Brazil for a number of years.
Fr. Paul Masson has served as a missioner in Chile and on the U.S.-Mexico border.
