Change is inevitable. How change happens, however, isn’t prescribed. In this issue of Maryknoll, we explore several areas where change is happening in our world and how Maryknoll missioners are responding.
In our lead article, we visit the Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program in Nairobi, Kenya. Founded by Maryknoll Father Edward Phillips more than three decades ago, the program provides antiretrovirals to HIV-positive people, allowing them to lead relatively normal lives. Abrupt cuts in U.S.-funded humanitarian aid worldwide have had a traumatic and severe impact on the program, including losses in staffing and the closure of clinics.
In another article, we look at the Church’s response to the indiscriminate roundup of immigrants in the United States and ongoing mass deportations. Local pastoral leaders, the U.S. bishops and Pope Leo XIV speak in a unified voice to decry these policies. Foreign vocations to the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers and the Maryknoll Sisters have also been affected. A retrospective article recalls a related topic, the Japanese internment, and commemorates Maryknoll’s role during that tragic episode of history.
Addressing waste and fraud in international aid programs can be done in ways that do not condemn millions of innocents to death because of the sins and incompetence of a few. Likewise, investing in due process for immigrants navigating the labyrinthine U.S. immigration legal system would be far more Christlike than arming masked agents to snatch them from our streets.
Lynn F. Monahan
Editor-in-Chief
