Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
October 18, 2000
Missionaries bring Christ's healing to the poor
Through prayers and financial support, World Mission Sunday, Oct. 22, offers the faithful in northern Colorado the opportunity to reach across the globe and offer assistance to those in need.
Sister Genevieve Van Waesburghe recalls her arrival in Rwanda in June of 1994 — and the 25,000 refugees who were waiting there. Just one month later, the refugee population had grown to 120,000 and continued to grow. The strife between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda had left some one million dead, including a great number of the country's priests and Religious, as well as many foreign missionaries.
Sister Genevieve, a doctor who is Dutch by birth, and Sister Josephine Keane, a nurse-midwife from Ireland's County Mayo, were part of a team of Medical Missionary of Mary Sisters who responded to the initial aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda.
"We lived in the refugee camp and set up a basic medical program there," Sister Genevieve told "Mission," the national magazine of the Propagation of the Faith, in a telephone interview last June. The clinic saw about 1,500 patients a day. "We went into Rwanda when no one else would, when no one else was there to help the poor, to show them the love of Jesus," Sister Genevieve added.
Her colleague, Sister Josephine, agrees. "The people would often tell me how much they appreciated our presence among them. They would say, `You came to us when the rest of the world thought we were a terrible people.'" Today, the Sisters serve in two different dioceses in Rwanda. Sister Genevieve is working among women in distress and treating many Rwandese with AIDS. Sister Josephine is in charge of a health center.
"Our presence is vitally important and needed," Sister Genevieve emphasizes, noting that she hopes that the presence of the Sisters — and their witness to Jesus — will promote healing and reconciliation. "Christ is the greatest healer and giver of peace. There is right now a real thirst for Christ here in Rwanda."
Sister Josephine tells the story of a mother who brought two severely malnourished children to the clinic. One child died; the other was treated, but remained very weak. In Rwanda, it is a tradition that the dead are carried home for burial by a family member. The mother took the little sick child home and said she would send her husband back for her other son.
Sister Josephine remembers a man coming to them the next day: "No shoes, hardly any clothing, and nothing in which to carry home his son." The Sisters gave him a cardboard box in which to place the child, and the man struggled off through the camp, no one coming to his aid. Sister Josephine turned to a Rwandese man who was there with her, and asked him why. He answered, "Sister, who will help the poor unless you do?"
Sister Josephine believes that she and the other Sisters can and should do a lot in the work for reconciliation. "But," she says, "I really believe that the important thing is not so much what we do, but how we do it. How we relate to one another, moment by moment — that is what will count in the end. That is what will make the difference."
