| GOD'S ENTREPRENEURS |
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Thousands of Irish men and women have served as missionaries in the world's poorest countries. In 'God's Entrepreneurs' Joe Humphreys examines this unique movement, showing how a plan to bring Christianity to 'pagan lands' was overtime accompanied by a humanitarian operation that has affected millions of lives. Missionaries have done extraordinary work in some remote parts of the world and among those dealt with in the book are two Bray women: Sr. Cyril Mooney and Sr. Orla Tracy. We thought you might be interested to read what he has to say about these two women. Sr. Cyril Mooney, a Loreto Sister from Wolf Tone Square in Bray, in 1979 converted a 120 year old private school - which had been geared for a privileged few - into a self-proclaimed 'rainbow' project, Loreto Shaldah. In this school in downtown Calcutta (now officially known as Kolkata) she has pioneered a form of education that crosses the social classes and turns barefoot street children into successful professionals. The school today caters for 1,400 students and since the early 1990s has provided accommodation, food and clothing fort the poorest among them. It is estimated that Sr. Cyril has directly assisted up to 400, 000 people during her half century in India and their uplifting has mirrored a transformation of the country. Away from the plush resorts Sr. Cyril relaxes in the office of Loreto Sealah adjacent to a city highway. On her desk sits the Padma Shri, one of the highest honours bestowed by the Indian President. The Indian Government generally gives the award to Indian citizens, and just over 2,000 people have received the honour since its inception. Inside her office, children lie scattered around the floor, reading Indian folk tales or playing cards and ludo. Some are practicing spelling by writing with chalk on the ground. Others finish up the day’s chores, scrubbing pans or mopping tiles floors. It’s almost time for bed. Sr. Cyril takes down a red whistle and blows. Hundreds of kids come scuttling out from every corner, demanding bedtime hugs. Sr. Cyril embraces each child individually. Funding for her project has not been easy. She gets donations from a range of public and private sources, but there is little certainty from year to year. One of her most successful fundraising projects was an interview with Gay Byrne on his morning show. She describes how it went: I was told he'd ask me a question and I was to keep talking until he interrupted. I was warned not to clam up on him. He had some nun on earlier that just gave yes and no answers. Remember though I had told this story for the previous seventeen days so when I went into him it flew out of me. We talked for a whole hour and we mentioned if anyone wanted to make a donation they could send money to the Loreto Convent in Bray. When I went out to Bray later, fellas were driving up in lorries saying, "Here's ten quid for the nun from India I heard on the radio." The response was incredible and helped save the school. From that point on we went from strength to strength. Sr. Orla Treacy The drenched earth is drying despite the humidity. It's the start of the rainy season but as yet the downpours are intermittent. When one deluge comes, a cluster of schoolgirls at Loreto Rumbek scatter amid peals of laughter. Their 37-year-old school principal, Sr Orla Treacy, watches bemused. A soaking in the rain is the least of her worries. Tensions here can surface at any time, either among her students or in the wider southern Sudanese society. In this fraught and battle-scarred community, the slightest provocation can ignite any number of potential flashpoints, often abetted by the rampant poverty', high rate of male unemployment and prevalence of guns. 'When the cows are moving, there's a lot more tension,' says Sr. Orla, from Bray, County Wicklow. One of the first things she learnt about the local Dinka culture was the importance of cattle for the people. When cows wander from the land of one clan into another’s in search of water it can be perceived as an attempt to steal a herd and so 'old fights' are reignited. Entire villages have been wiped out in cattle raids, creating fresh atrocities in a region already traumatised by war. 'Violence is here constantly’; adds Sr. Orla, who was robbed at gunpoint in November 2008 when thieves broke into her convent. ‘There are times when you feel it more than other times, but you can't live in fear.' Loreto Rumbek is located on 100 acres of scrubland which is being cultivated to produce food for the boarding school. A major school building programme is also underway. It is an indication of the esteem the local community has for the nuns that it permitted them to settle on a site which is considered 'sacred'. Right beside the school lies a burial plot where up to 500 people were massacred at a wedding feast during Sudan's long-running civil war between the mainly Muslim north Sudan and the mainly Christian, or Animist, south. The decision by the Loreto sisters to set up a school here in 2006 - in the aftermath of a conflict that claimed 2 million lives and despite the instability and violence in Darfur. a few hundred kilometres north of Rumbek - in a certain sense defies logic. The congregation held a general meeting the previous year to discuss its future against a backdrop of dwindling vocations and an ageing workforce. The heads of each national Loreto branch met in Rome and decided that instead of adopting a policy of retrenchment they would try to recapture the spirit of the congregation's founder, the English nun Mary Ward, and of its Irish figurehead, Frances Mary Teresa Ball. That meant starting new missions despite a relatively small number of sisters. The Kenyan Loretos decided to go to Ghana to open a rural school, the Australians to East Timor to start a teacher-training project. The South Africans went to Zambia and the Spanish to Equador. As for the Irish, 'We had a strong feeling we should go to Sudan, and set up a girls' school, because that was seen as the area of greatest need,' Sr. Orla explains. Loreto Rumbek is the first secondary school for girls in Lake State, a province of 40,000 square kilometers with a population of 350,000. Traditionally, in the Dinka tribe, a woman is valued by her cow value. She is rated by how many cows they can marry her for.' Women are very much second-class citizens, and it galls Sr. Orla when students are pulled out of school indiscriminately by parents who don't value their daughters' education. 'One of the big things for us would be if the kids become pregnant. I would say to the family, “Please do not beat your daughter, please do not marry off your daughter, please allow your daughter to complete her education.” That's all you can do, and only hope they can listen to you.' Sometimes she has to bite her tongue because, 'If the parents think we are trying to take from their culture, or tell them what to do. we will find ourselves in trouble and what could happen is they will put us on a plane and there will be no school.' Her sensitivity to local culture is quite different to the approach of early missionaries like Teresa 'Mother Kevin' Kearney, who chopped down the sacred tree of Nkokonjeru in Uganda, a country next door, to try to displace local beliefs with Catholicism. Sr. Orla says the Loreto sisters are in Sudan primarily for the girls' education and 'if evangelisation comes out of that it's an extra'. Tall and slim with copper-coloured hair, Sr. Orla mixes easily with her young charges, passing on more words of encouragement than discipline on a typical day. Unlike at the nearby bush school, where children who misbehave are beaten with a stick, there is no corporal punishment here, and when it comes to religion, there is an ‘open’ dialogue, Sr. Orla stresses. ‘I'd have an abhorrence about pushing religion on people but where I am people are searching and wanting instruction because they see Christianity as something that could be positive for their lives.' While discussing the topic, she notes approvingly that one of her students has a T-shirt with the slogan 'Africa by Africans'. ‘They want Africa to be led by Africans. So if we become redundant here it is because others are qualified to do the work. That achievement would be the greatest for all of us.’ |