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 joined other organizations in sending the following letter to House and Senate Leadership urging them to prioritize sending aid to Latin America and the Caribbean, which are new coronavirus epicenter regions.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns joins other organizations and communities in issuing a statement calling for the international community to take immediate measures to protect Amazonian communities from the risk of COVID-19 outbreak.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns gratefully welcomes "Querida Amazonia," Pope Francis's Exhortation in response to the Synod on the Amazon.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns remembers Jakelin and calls on the U.S. government to end the inhumane treatment of migrants.
The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns released the following statement on the political crisis in Bolivia on November 27, 2019.
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.
A new investment fund in Brazil aims to support small-scale, sustainable agriculture.
The Latin America Working Group offers a roundup of the actions by governments in Latin America that use the pandemic to expand corrupt or repressive rule or respond with police brutality. The following article was published in the July-August 2020 issue of NewsNotes.
COVID-19 has begun to drastically affect life in Latin America. While government restrictions are essential to save lives, measures must protect, not harm, citizens.
The Brazilian government has been slow to respond to the coronavirus pandemic on the federal level, but local governments and community organizations are working hard to care for vulnerable people.
This is an abbreviated English translation of a statement on the effect of the pandemic on rural communities from the Civil Association of Human Rights and the Environment (DHUMA), in Puno, Peru. Sr. Patricia Ryan, MM, is president of DHUMA.
Dan Moriarty, an MOGC staff member and returned Maryknoll Lay Missioner who lived in Bolivia for 17 years, examines the political crisis and ways to restore democracy and protect indigenous rights in Bolivia.
Dan Moriarty, a former lay Maryknoll missioner, lives and works 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.
Former lay missioner Heidi Cerneka served in Brazil; she wrote the following reflection which was published in A Maryknoll Liturgical Year: Reflections on the Readings for Year B, available from Orbis Books.
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.
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.
