Two men shake hands on a bridge in Kuron, South Sudan. Photo by Paul Jeffrey.
On Tuesday, Aug 13, 2024, please join us at 6:30 PM Eastern Time for a 90-minute webinar on nonviolence in action. This Zoom event will kick off a year of celebrating Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ 50th anniversary. Titled “Maryknoll Lay Missioners: 50 Years on the Journey,” this series will feature occasional events throughout this “Golden Jubilee” year. The yearlong celebration will culminate in an in-person celebration Aug. 14-17, 2025 on the Maryknoll campus. Mark your calendars now.
The panelists, clockwise from top left: Marie Dennis, Tom Bamat, Fred Goddard and Merwyn and Kirstin De Mello.
Two years ago, Maryknoll Lay Missioners adopted nonviolence as its guiding focus to approaching mission in the 21st century. As internationally respected nonviolence expert Marie Dennis has put it, “Nonviolence is a phenomenal witness to a world that is hungry for a new way to relate to each other. It’s a spirituality, it’s a way of life, it’s a global ethic. Our choice of nonviolence puts us in harmony with a world shift and joins us to many other groups and individuals that are embracing nonviolence and working to build a more peaceful world.”
Marie, who is a member both of Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ board of directors and of the executive committee of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, will join several returned Maryknoll lay missioners who have been practitioners of nonviolence for this event. The panel will share their experiences of and perspectives on “Nonviolence in Action.”
Thomas Bamat served for 23 years as a Maryknoll lay missioner in Ecuador, Brazil and the U.S. and subsequently was a Peacebuilding Advisor with Catholic Relief Services. Fred Goddard joined Maryknoll Lay Missioners in 1985 and became involved in peacebuilding and nonviolence in the Philippines and Central America; he recently retired from the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute in Davao, Philippines. Merwyn and Kirstin De Mello served with Maryknoll Lay Missioners and other faith-based organizations in Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. In 2022, they received the Bishop McCarthy Spirit of Mission Award “for their untiring compassionate and transformative service, accompaniment and activism with marginalized people in Africa, Asia and the United States.”
All are invited to this online gathering, which will include a time for small-group conversation about nonviolence in our own lives.
Please click the button to register for the event:
Compelled by faith to engage with people across cultures and ethnicities, Maryknoll lay missioners live, love and work with communities on the margins to promote active nonviolence and healing.
Good topic in these troubled times.