ears flowed from her eyes as Maureen Long recalled her parents’ last wish. Francis and Patricia Lafferty, a couple from Pennsylvania who were married for 58 years, wanted their wedding rings to become part of an enduring sacred symbol. A few months before Patricia passed away in September of 2022, she expressed this wish: “That our wedding ring...
Winter 2025
Everyday Sacred, Everywhere Beauty
If we’re wise we find a book like this one … with every hope we ever dreamed, and every word we remember of its insights, and all the joy and possibility it ever brought to all our wishes and all the promises we promised before these times to celebrate the rest of life. — From the Afterword by Joan Chittister Mary Lou Kownacki, who died in 20...
World Watch: Modern Slavery at Sea
More than 130 people from at least 17 countries participated in the three-day International Conference on Fisher’s Welfare in Taichung City, Taiwan, this past May. The conference was organized and hosted by Maryknoll Father Joyalito Tajonera, who serves as the director of Stella Maris-Taiwan. Stella Maris is the Catholic Church’s Apostolate of ...
Spirit of Mission: The Thought that Counts
A rabbi was giving a workshop on Scripture to Maryknollers in Africa some years ago. As part of his visit, the missioners showed him around Tanzania: Mt. Kilimanjaro, wildlife in the Serengeti, and of course, the wonderful hospitality of a Tanzanian family. As they sat down to dinner, Father John Sivalon, who was Maryknoll’s regional superior for...
Maryknoll’s Journey to the Yucatán
Maryknoll accompanies U.S. Catholics to discern how to share the gift of mission, says Deacon Leonel Yoque, who leads the Maryknoll Society’s Missionary Disciples team. Deacon Yoque, Maryknoll Father John Martin and I guided two immersion trips last June. The destination for both groups was Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Adults from different sta...
Helping Kenyans Live with HIV/AIDS
Alice Njoroge, the managing director of the Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program, talks about the program, its success and the role of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers during the last three decades. Njoroge spoke with Maryknoll’s Adam Mitchell in Nairobi. This transcript has been edited for clarity and space. I‘ve been in EDARP for the last 30...
Love Exists in Tonacatepeque
It’s Wednesday. Robert “Bob” Cunningham gets up early in Zaragoza, El Salvador, where he and his wife Elizabeth “Liz” Cunningham serve as Maryknoll lay missioners. He sets out for Ciudad Merliot, 45 minutes away. At 8 a.m., Bob meets up with Mercedarian Father Jonathan Vásquez and other volunteers. They drive for an hour to a juvenile co...
An Oasis in the Borderlands
The arid, rugged terrain of El Paso, Texas, could be described as inhospitable. El Pasoans, however, are anything but. In this border city, Catholic missioners, volunteers and advocates have historically heeded the call to help the stranger and feed the hungry. For Maryknoll Father Raymond Finch, a New Yorker from Brooklyn who served Indigenous com...
Sharing Light in a Circle of Life
In Zimbabwe, Maryknoll Sister Chiyoung Pak is known by a radiant name. “As I walk along the street, people greet me jovially, ‘Sister Chiedza, how is it going?’” she says. “Chiedza is the Shona word for light and brightness.” It’s hard to tell from her sunny disposition, but Sister Pak’s optimism has been sorely tested in this count...
From South Dakota to Zona Sur
Growing up in South Dakota, young Paul Sykora came up with an innovative way to get around his family’s farm. “I would take the motor off a lawn mower and put it on my bike,” he says. Nowadays, Maryknoll Father Sykora nurses the engine of a 1985 Volkswagen Beetle. This beat-up but reliable vehicle takes him up the mountainous roads of Zona Su...
Finding Christ in Our Humanness
In our busy lives Christmas does not often offer us a peaceful time for purposeful reflection, but we do encounter God in our humanness. The Bible readings of Christmas offer us several snapshots of humanness. One is that though Mary was betrothed to Joseph, she was with child before the marriage. This was seen as a stigma. And this stigma followed...
From the Editor: Jubilee of Hope
In announcing the Jubilee 2025, which begins on Christmas Eve, Pope Francis proclaimed hope as the central message of the year. Under the title “Hope Does Not Disappoint,” taken from the writings of Saint Paul, the papal bull is a treatise on hope. From the time of the early Church until Vatican II and into the present, the Church offers to the...
