West Africa's flagship universal health care plan, held up as a model for developing countries, has an eight-month delay paying back health institutions, forcing one Catholic hospital to teeter on the edge of bankruptcy and look for enterprise services to earn extra operating capital.
by Betty Ann Maheu
Contributor
"Does the government interfere with your work?" the foreign visitor asked Hà. "I just heard one of the children call you 'Sister.' Does the government know that you're a religious sister, and still they let you work here?" As a Maryknoll missionary working in China, Ngoc Hà Pham, like every Maryknoll Sister, including myself, who has worked in China, has answered those questions repeatedly.
by Christin Tomy
In a little less than a month I'll make my first profession. The date has been chosen, and the invitations have been sent. The liturgy is planned. And I'm not sure I'm ready.
by Nancy Linenkugel
Contributor
See for Yourself - A colleague returned to work following foot surgery and it was great to welcome him back. Without crutches or a cane, he hobbled around sporting a hardshell white "boot" that immobilized his lower leg, ankle and foot.
by GSR Staff
"I am often angry. I don't accept criminality, death, torture, bombings. I can't cope with that. I have a desire to see something else. I am impatient. I want the Kingdom now. I want the peace now."
by Christine Schenk
It is May, and like every good Catholic girl of a certain age, I remember this as the month we celebrate Mary, the mother of Jesus. A lot of terrific recent scholarship is helping my generation recover from earlier interpretations of Mary as a revered (if impossible to imitate) virgin-mother role model often portrayed as silent, passive, and obedient.
GSR Today - Most of us know migrants as numbers or through stories we read; recently, I had the opportunity to go on a Border Witness Program retreat and, with four Mercy associates, see several ministries in the Rio Grande Valley firsthand.
by Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans
Contributor
Last summer, Sr. Melinda Pellerin stood before friends and parishioners at Holy Name Parish in Springfield, Massachusetts, where she serves as a pastoral minister, and professed her first vows as a Sister of St. Joseph of Springfield. Pellerin — then 57, a widow and retired — made history as the congregation's first African-American sister.
by GSR Staff
"You must go to the people and really understand their needs. If you do that, people can change."
Betty Ann Maheu is a Maryknoll Sister with degrees in drama, theology, Italian and Chinese. She spent 18 years in Hawaii teaching and doing education administration before serving on the Maryknoll leadership team then with the International Union of Superiors General as a coordinating editor and translator for the UISG main publication (Bulletin). A frequent traveler to China, she has taught English there and for 15 years served at the Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong.
