Maryknoll Sisters

In response to the U.S. Bishops request to help the Church in Eastern Europe, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious appealed for volunteers. The Maryknoll Sisters Congregational Leadership Team asked for volunteers.

Four Sisters volunteered and three arrived in Albania on February 1, 1995, the other following in 1996. Through discernment with the Apostolic Administrator and the pastor of Korce, the Sisters opted to pioneer where there was no Catholic presence. May 1,1995 marked the official opening of the Catholic Church and the Maryknoll Sisters presence in Pogradec. Beginnings: learning the language, home visits, teaching, visiting patients in the hospital, group learning activities, community prayers. They formed a Christian community among children and young adults who grew up with no religion at all. During these years, nineteen teenagers received Baptism.

The Maryknoll Sisters were blessed to be a part of twenty-two religious missionaries of fourteen nationalities from six different institutes, witnessing the universal presence of the Church in Albania. In 1997 when many Albanians lost their life savings in fraudulent investment schemes and violence erupted, the two Maryknoll Sisters in Pogradec shared reflections on the brutal reality, and wrote, “We both reaffirmed our commitment to wait and stay here with Jesus in the Gethsemane of Albania.” In 1999, the Kosovar refugees poured into Pogradec and the small community visited the camps, inviting refugees to meals in their neighborhood. It was serving the needs of the Kosovars that attracted the young people to mission in the countryside.

With apostles in place, the last Sister left Pogradec on March 19, 2002. A second chapter of mission in Albania opened when Sister Lourdes Fernandez was assigned to return, arriving on October 6, 2006 in Elbasan. She lives with Italian Dominican Sisters and collaborates with a Montessori School, teaching values education in both English and Albanian. She celebrated with her Albanian friends as they heard the Kosova/o Prime Minister proclaim independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008, in the Albanian language.

When Bishop J. Quinn Weitzel, M.M., was named bishop of the new Samoa-Pago Pago diocese in American Samoa in 1986, he sought some specialized services from Maryknoll Sisters in Hawaii. In the following years, Sisters Marilyn Evans, a Montessori teacher trainer, and Kathleen Skenyon, a master librarian, responded with short term visits for workshops and library assistance. Happily, on June 9, 1991, the Sisters of Hawaii had a Mission Sending Ceremony to send Sisters Marilyn and Kathleen to American Samoa where they arrived on June 13.

Sister Kathleen reorganized the library of the diocesan Pastoral and Cultural Center and put 1400 items on the computer. She had established library development services for diocesan schools and libraries, and trained full time librarians before leaving in 1994. After more than forty years of experience as a social worker, Sister Mary Naab was invited by Bishop Weitzel in 1993 to assist in the development of Catholic Social Services. She and three Samoans met once a week to be consultants with each other. Emphasis was placed on counseling and developing Samoan teams for village education on alcoholism as a family disease, and domestic violence, an island-wide educational effort. She was one of Samoa’s six representatives to attend the National Conference of State Representatives in Washington following the passage of the Violence Against Women Act.

As founder and director of CSS until 1997, Sister Mary was invited back in 2002 to be the keynote speaker at a conference concerning the increased violence toward women and children. Her talk was on “Looking Back and Looking Forward,” and focused on collaboration. Sister Marilyn opened a Montessori school in the eastern part of the island where there was only one elementary school; she started with four children and volunteer teachers and in 2002 they were in a new school with about ninety-five children between 3- and 6-years-old. Their classes about God and relationships were shared with their families.

Sister Marilyn has remained in American Samoa, teaching and working with the teachers both as educators and as women.

Fourteen Maryknoll Sisters have lived in Bangladesh since the first three arrived in 1979 at the invitation of the archbishop of Dacca. They had language study and an acculturation period with a local Bengali community of Sisters. On the streets they noticed that many of the married women still wore the burqa, an overall covering.

At the archbishop’s request, they joined one of the Bengali Sisters in the ministry of Natural Family Planning on a diocesan level. The Sisters got the program under the sponsorship of Caritas, the government registered program for social projects of the bishops of Bangladesh. Later they were invited to set up the program in other dioceses. Other ministries over the years included an outreach program for third degree malnourished children; seminary teaching; hospital and clinic work.

Two Sisters started a program for women drug addicts but shifted to prevention through education, the Bangladesh Alternative Course for Human Advancement (BACHA). After topics such as AIDS, self esteem and human rights were adapted to the Bangladeshi culture and language, they were printed in a textbook.  They train young women and men as facilitators to incorporate an innovative curriculum of human values in secondary schools.

Because the majority of BACHA’s  teachers and students in Bangladesh are Muslim with a minority of Hindus and Christians, the training course shows how human values are reinforced by the basic teachings of the great world religions as well as Christianity. This education for life program has spread to several dioceses, reaching thousands of students in high schools, a college, and houses of religious formation.

More than 100 Maryknoll Sisters have lived in Bolivia. It all started in 1943 when six arrived in Riberalta, a tropical area of the country. The first two Maryknoll Sisters who arrived on September 20 were met by townspeople, who escorted the misisoners in a procession to their new home. In 1945, the Maryknoll Sisters opened Riberalta Hospital and staffed it until local trained personnel assumed responsibility in 1974. The Sisters also ran elementary and high schools until their former students were equipped to take over. They offered secretarial, sewing and nursing education and held clinics along the riverbanks while preparing radio programs.

Eventually, the Maryknoll Sisters went to Cochabamba, La Paz, Santa Cruz and other cities, working in health and education programs for catechists, lay leaders and others. They also worked in an ecumenical colonization program of community development; the first colony ministry was with 100 lowland families who lost the little they had in a flood. The families were given a stake in some jungle areas, and Maryknoll Sisters accompanied them. Later, two Maryknoll Sisters journeyed elsewhere in Bolivia to set up a second colony for upland families.

Ministries range from collaborating with the Maryknoll Mission Center in Latin America to campus ministry, teaching bioethics, and working with streetchildren, a school for the blind, and basic Christian communities.

The Brazil Mission Community (BMC) is comprised of all Maryknoll missioners (lay, priests, Brothers, and Sisters) assigned to Brazil. Three Maryknoll Sisters and one Maryknoll Sister Associate were assigned to Brazil in February, 1990; two had worked in Bolivia and two in Chile. Their first Brazil ministries were in basic Christian communities, women’s mental health, women’s spirituality. catechesis and liturgy preparation. Four other Sisters joined the BMC later.

Presently two Sisters work in Sao Paulo and two in Joao Pessoa. Their ministries include a women’s holistic health center, training health promoters, accompanying people living with AIDS, education against racism, Indigenous Pastoral, formation courses for catechists, lay ministers, youth, women and young adults, justice issues. All work with Brazilians in their ministries or with another member of the BMC team.