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From the Editor: Heralds of Hope

By Lynn F. Monahan | September 2, 2025
Our cover features the two new priests ordained in June to the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. Father Matthew Sim and Father Patrick Okok were both assigned to mission in Taiwan. The ordaining prelate, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, recounted during the ordination Mass how his own vocation to the priesthood was inspired in part by a Maryknoll mis...
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The Wisdom of Plants

By Alejandro Marina, M.M. | March 4, 2024
WEB-ONLY: Listening is an important element of Pope Francis’ call to care for our Common Home. How will we care without listening? How can we understand the needs of Mother Earth if we don’t listen when it cries out? When the poor cry out? How will we change our habits if we don’t learn what nature is trying to teach us? In Bolivia, one man...
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Partners in Mission: Maryknoll Dreams

By Sandro Paiva | March 4, 2024
My name is Sandro Aldo Paiva Crispin and I am a 44-year-old Maryknoll volunteer in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I serve in the museum at the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Center, where we share our collection of photos, publications and historical objects about Maryknoll in Latin America. This legacy is a wealth we cannot keep to ourselves.  I was born i...
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Orbis Books: Laudate Deum; Come, Have Breakfast

By Robert Ellsberg | March 4, 2024
“The world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”  —Pope Francis, Laudate Deum  Pope Francis’ recent apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, is a short but urgent follow-up to his historic encyclical of 2015, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. In that earlier document he firmly established eco...
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World Watch: Ethnic Cleansing in Sudan?

By Thomas Gould | March 4, 2024
In the civil war in Sudan, independent sources confirm reports of renewed ethnic killings of civilians in the long-conflicted Darfur region.  The civil war that broke out on April 15 of last year pits the Sudanese army against a rival military group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF and associated militias have been accused of e...
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Spirit of Mission: In the Shadow of the Cross

By Joseph Veneroso, M.M. | March 4, 2024
One of the first challenges a missioner faces overseas is learning to communicate in a different language. Scripture gives us ample warning that to communicate the love of Christ to all peoples, we must do a lot of “dying” to ourselves. We are “strangers in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22), and in a new place, missioners will make linguistic m...
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Missioner Tales, Spring 2024

By Missioner Tales | March 4, 2024
Sorghum is a most incredible plant. It can survive in South Sudan’s harsh semi-arid environment and resists pests and diseases that ravage maize or cassava. There is really only one predator that can damage an entire crop in a short time: birds. If left unchecked, small sparrow-like birds that congregate in the hundreds will eliminate the farmer...
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Missioner Tales, Winter 2024

By Missioner Tales | December 4, 2023
The 25 or so prisoners gathered in a cell at the men’s detention center in São Paulo, Brazil, where I served as a Maryknoll lay missioner, watched me patiently, with puzzled faces. I placed four construction paper “candles” on the table and held up a yellow construction paper “flame,” asking for a volunteer. One of the men raised his han...
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From the Editor: Life’s Purpose

By Lynn F. Monahan | December 4, 2023
To start, let me wish every one of our readers a most joyous Advent. As we enter into this period of anticipation of Christmas, preparing for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, we tend to focus on happiness and cheerfulness, family and friendships, gift giving and generosity, and look to decorate our surroundings with the symbols of the season. Wit...
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Readers’ Responses, Winter 2024

By Our Readers | December 4, 2023
NAÏVE APPROACH This letter is in response to the World Watch column in your Fall 2023 issue, “What’s Next for Asylum?” These people are illegal aliens entering this country to do criminal acts — sex trafficking, drug trafficking, etc. These aliens are not “fleeing persecution.” Quite the contrary. Yes, innocent children are involved an...
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Partners in Mission: Christian Charity in Action in Taiwan

By Charles Niece | December 4, 2023
It was the spring of 2019, and I was about to finish my undergraduate studies in philosophy and theology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. I could recite lines from papal encyclicals and regurgitate Greek words for different forms of love. In short, I knew Christian charity from a chalkboard in a seminary classroom. All that changed when the ...
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Orbis Books: A Generous Lap

By Robert Ellsberg | December 4, 2023
This book will speak to your desires to love more generously — and to be open to such love in return. — Mary Stommes Do you have grandchildren? Are you a grandchild? If so, Kathy Coffey’s new book A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting is for you or for someone you love. In her charming and inspiring reflections, Coffey reflects on ...
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World Youth Day 2023: Voices of Pilgrims

By Giovana Soria | December 4, 2023
Maryknoll Father Rodrigo Ulloa-Chavarry and Maryknoll mission education promoter Sarahi Unzueta accompanied young Catholics from the United States during the World Youth Day gathering in Lisbon, Portugal. Here we share the testimonials of some pilgrims. (Conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.) To learn more about WYD 2023, read t...
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