Sr. Josephine Adibo and Sr. Helen O'Regan were quoted in a recent National Catholic Reporter article about the violence in Kenya, written by Joe Orso. Below is an excerpt and a link to the entire article.

In early January, a church was set ablaze in Eldoret, taking the lives of at least 30 people seeking shelter there. Eldoret, situated just south of Kisumu in eastern Kenya, hotbed of the recent violence, is home to a community of Religious of the Sacred Heart, who were attending a meeting in neighboring Uganda at the time. Later in the month, a Catholic priest was brutally killed at one of the roadblocks that dot the country. Angry mobs have set homes and businesses ablaze and thousands of people have taken flight in a mass migration from enemies who may once have been neighbors or friends.

Makeshift roadblocks have made traveling slow and dangerous, and in late January many students had not returned from Christmas break to the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, where Sacred Heart Sr. Josephine Adibo serves as lecturer and counselor to an international student population. Of those who had returned, many suffered from a deep sense of hopelessness, she said. Often she finds the best she can offer is to counsel people to use their pain to ease the pain of others, to become “wounded healers in a wounded world, especially on this wounded continent,” she said.

Masses on the Nairobi campus have focused on peace, reconciliation and a solution to the crisis, with intercessions spoken in various Kenyan and African languages. Members of the campus community have donated blood to victims of the violence.

...

Sacred Heart Sr. Helen O’Regan, who coordinates an AIDS education and prevention program in her diocese, said getting necessary medications to displaced people has become a major challenge, posing risks to both people who are ill and caregivers. O’Regan, an American, has worked as a missionary in Africa for 30 years and helped build a province whose members today are predominately African.

Recently she was driving to visit a community of her sisters in Chekalini when she saw a roadblock with 10 or 15 youths ahead of her. She made a three-point turn, only to see more youth behind her putting stones across the road. But their barrier was not complete, and O’Regan didn’t stop when a youth whom she said had “a beautiful smile” tried to flag her down.

While most of the violence is not aimed at foreigners, they are necessarily deeply impacted by the unfolding horror around them. O’Regan and the sisters in her community, whom she described as from various tribes, which she declined to name, pray together every evening. “And we feel the support of our sisters and their prayer from all over the world,” she said.

“We are Religious of the Sacred Heart -- that’s how we see each other and that’s how we want to be,” O’Regan said. “We have a call to witness union in Christ and our charism is to discover Christ’s love and make his love known, so we first have to have that among ourselves.”

 

Click here for the full article. Thanks to Pam Schaeffer for bringing the article to our attention and sending the link.