Amigas para sempre…Friends forever

Our Lady’s Missionaries in Brazil 1964-2013

By Sr. Clarice Garvey, O.L.M.
May/June 2013

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“I know the plans I have in mind for you—it is Yahweh who speaks—plans for peace not disaster. Reserving a future full of hope for you.” (Jeremiah 29:11-12)

As I look back over the history of Our Lady’s Missionaries in Brazil, I feel enormous gratitude for the gift that God gave us in calling us to leave Canada and go to a strange country to share our lives in mission. Forty-nine years ago, four young Sisters, Mona Kelly, Mary Deighan, Maejanet MacDonell, and Cecile Turner were invited to assist with nursing services in a newly built maternity hospital in the city of Fortaleza situated in the northeast of Brazil. As the years passed, other OLM Sisters came to share in this ministry.

The first OLMs to arrive in Brazil in 1964. L-R: Sisters Cecile Turner, Mona Kelly, Mary Deighan, and Maejanet MacDonell

In 1979, the Latin American Bishops guided by liberation theology, urged the Church to make an option for the poor. As a result, our Sisters felt called to minister to the people in the rural areas of the state. Over time many of us in Brazil went up to the hills of Aratuba, Mulungu, and Palmacia. In these towns and surrounding areas, we carried out an amazing variety of ministries such as nursing, health teaching, home visiting, and community development in answer to the needs of the people. We were able to help them see the great value of their Base Christian communities as they gathered together to reflect on their lives in the light of the Gospel. In return they made us feel we were part of them.

In the early 1980s, 80 percent of the land of Brazil was held by rich landowners. As the Base Christian communities came together, they discovered their own power to oppose this unjust system. Many people supported them in facing the injustice of this unfair distribution of land. Sr. Maejanet MacDonell and I were already involved with the landless, having worked among them for some time for the liberation of the land and the people. It was their faith and courage, and their united struggle for just land distribution that brought the farmers to where they are now as I leave Brazil in early 2013. And the struggle will continue so that every landless person there will one day be able to say the words spoken by a previously landless woman: “ Thank God, I will never again be put out of my own home.”

Sr. Lucy at the drop in centre for AIDS patients where she regularly visited.

Over the years, our Sisters continued to work in and about the city of Fortaleza in a variety of ministries. We accompanied street kids, taught English and arts and crafts, and worked in the Little Libraries where children in the community are taught to read and write. We visited homes and hospital patients especially those affected by HIV/AIDS at a time when antiretrovirals were not yet locally available.

As the cost of living steadily increased in the city, housing became more and more difficult to obtain especially for the poor. Sr. Mona was aware of the existence of a huge tract of unoccupied land on the outskirts of the city, in a district called Pici. The area had served as a landing field during World War II. In 1990 she began to encourage and then organize homeless people to go there and stake out a lot for themselves by leaving something on it, a chair, a large stick, and so on. She and Sr. Norma Samar did the same. Gradually many other courageous people followed suit. Finally the local mayor conceded to the occupation and today there are about 5,000 families living on that land.

Sr. Mona with Scorro and her baby in the district of Pici

Brazilians are noted for their amazing capacity to celebrate. Nowhere has it been more evident to me than in the joyful farewells for the last three OLMs, Sr. Lucy Lee, Sr. Lorie Nuñez, and me, as we represented each one of our Sisters who served in mission in Brazil. There was a mutual out-pouring of gratitude and love between us and the Brazilian people who had taken us into their hearts and homes.

We read in the Book of Revelation that in the heavenly Jerusalem all tears will be wiped away. But might it be possible that our founder, Fr. Dan MacDonald, had at least one tear of joy left to weep at the great gift given to Our Lady’s Missionaries in our many years of mission in Brazil?

Sr. Lorie with her English students.

Visiting the farm. L-R: Jão, Sr. Clarice, and Bob Thomas, project manager for SHARE.

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