Maryknoll Sisters

When your 7-year-old sister is dying of cancer, who do you turn to? Sister Kathleen Reiley's blog post about the love between two sisters reveals the true message of the Easter season.

As you know, I work with children with cancer. About four weeks ago, a little 7-year-old girl died.

Her older sister often came to the hospital and had to wait in the waiting room for hours until it was time to go home with her mother. Since she was under 12, she couldn’t go into the ward to see her sister often.

We had a Cherry Blossoms viewing picnic for the families recently, and the sister of the little girl who had died told her mommy that she would like to go to the picnic.

We took a walk together through the park after the picnic and this is a picture of the little piece of gravel that Rue’s sister found. When Rue would make a card or something in art class, she often made hearts!

A real message of love between sisters!

Happy Easter!

 – Sister Kathleen Reiley, MM

As we approach one year since the horrific tsunami in Japan, the message that moved Sr. Kathleen Reiley more than any other was from a 9-year-old boy: 'I don't want to get sick.'

I just got back from Fukushima and Iwate in Japan (which were affected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami), and was also able to attend an international conference on getting rid of nuclear energy.

Here are a few important facts that I hope you will share with as many people as you know:

There are 600 tons of nuclear fuel in Fukushima prefecture.  There were 10 tons in the Chernobyl accident.

In reactor Reactor 1, 68 tons of fuel has melted and is eating through the container.  There are only about 30 centimeters left of the container – but even that fact cannot be certified – since no one can get close to the area because of the high radioactivity.

Fuel has also melted in Reactors 2 and 3. Reactor 3 contains plutonium – which has a half life of 24,000 years. Traces of it have already been found outside of the reactor.

The water being used to cool the reactors and the spent fuel stored in Reactor 4 is still leaking. They are running out of storage tanks to hold the excess water and are considering releasing it into the sea in the spring.

There are four kilometers of pipes carrying this water and now with the winter – there is danger of the pipes freezing and not being able to carry the water. If the fuel continues to eat through the container and it gets into the ground water and then flows into the sea – who can imagine what the result will be.

Because the fuel is eating through the containment vessel it will make it much harder to remove the melted fuel and it’s still very hot. It will probably take 40 to 50 years until it is removed and then the big question is where to store all this nuclear waste.

No prefecture wants to accept it.  In fact, there is no place in the world that is considered a safe place for it. Ninety percent of the workers who are doing this extremely dangerous work are day laborers.

Ordinarily, being exposed to just 30 milliseiverts can cause cancer and these men are allowed to be exposed to 250.  Then they are laid off and usually are unemployed with no real benefits.  It really is throw-away labor.  And they need 30,000 people to do this work.  Some of them are loaded on a bus and only later told they are being taken to Fukushima.

Then there is the problem of the 160,000 people who have been evacuated.  Who have no idea when they can return to their homes.  And who have already been exposed to high doses of radiation when the accident happened.  And there are still many more people in the 20-30-kilometer radius who should be evacuated but are receiving no financial help from the government to evacuate.

The iodine has disappeared after eight days but there is cesium and stronium being found in the food chain.  Cesium will be around for at least 100 to 300 years!

And China, Pakistan, India, the United States, Chile, Lithuania, Vietnam, and Jordan are all planning to build even more nuclear reactors.

If we stopped all the reactors in the world today it would take at least 50 years to really decommission them and we have all this waste to figure out what to do with.  And yet we want to build even more?

At the international conference there were many experts from all over the world but the message that moved me more than any other was by a 9-year-old boy from Fukushima.  He said, “Our lives and our health are more important than money. I don’t want to get sick.”

You know I have been working with children with cancer.  I don’t want even one child to get cancer.  It’s devastating.

A study was just released by French doctors that twice as many children who live near nuclear reactors get leukemia.  And these are stable reactors that have not had an accident and still the rate of cancer is higher near them.

Please do all you can to help end nuclear energy now. The future of our earth and our children is at stake.

Love and Peace,

Sister Kathleen Reiley, MM

There is nothing more exotic than walking from a beautiful Brazilian beach into waist high, warm ocean waves toward the sunrise just appearing on the horizon. It is a profound moment of praise and wonder in the silence of early morning that quickly becomes a time for exuberant shouts of joy as we begin our morning exercise routine. All the while the sun rises bright and warm on bare skin marking perhaps the most memorable moment of my trip to Brazil. But who am I to make comparisons of most or least in a country of abundance; or of profound and profane in a country of vibrant passion for life; or of joy and sorrow; or of wealth and poverty in a country replete with human paradox. Brazil seems to be a country on the move speeding ahead into all things modern yet not sure of how to bring its racially, culturally and economically diverse population along on the journey nor of how to steward nature’s gifts not only for the good of Brazil but for the whole world.

The people I met in Brazil are warm, generous, and gracious to strangers and open to new experiences. There are seven Maryknoll Lay Missioners and one Maryknoll Priest who minister in Sao Paulo and there are two Maryknoll Sisters in Joao Pessoa and two in Sao Paulo. The Maryknoll Community in Brazil has drunk deeply from the font of Brazil’s passion for life. Their compassion shows in their efforts to heal, to reconcile, to feed hungry children, to accompany the vulnerable and to help the socially and culturally marginalized learn the skills they need to function in this complex country.

Joao Pessoa was the first stop in my trip to visit the Maryknoll Sisters’ presence in Brazil.

Srs. Theresia Ndesoma and Euphrasia (Efu) Nyaki live together and have two very meaningful yet different ministries. Efu works long hours in her healing ministry at the AFYA Center she founded to offer natural medicine, massage and a variety of individual somatic and group therapy sessions to help people heal from illness or trauma, and to discover new ways to reconcile difficult inter-personal relationships. The staff and clients refer to AFYA as a community and attribute that sense of community to Efu’s presence and ministry style. Theresia sponsors daily sessions in a Children’s Activity Program in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the Mangabeira area of Joao Pessoa. The program offers a two (2) hour educational session for children (5-11 yrs) each weekday morning with volunteer teachers. A hearty snack of fruit and bread is included in the session. The Children’s Program includes a natural nutritional supplement for infants and children up to five (5) years. The children are brought by their mothers on Saturdays to be weighed and the mothers participate in the follow-up health talks given as part of the program. Theresia visits the mothers in their homes and also reaches out to the elderly and ill who are most vulnerable in the neighborhoods in which she works.

Sao Paulo is a big and busy modern city of over ten million people. Sr. Carolyn Moritz lives and works in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. She is part of the Regional Counsel for Pastoral Programs of Brazilandi with Bishop Milton Kennon. As Coordinator of the Pastoral Programs in her local parish of Sao Marie Louis de Montfort, Carolyn is active in the adult formation and catechism programs and offers her help in Music, Ministry of the Word and the Ecology Committee.

Carolyn and Sr. Mercy Mtaita both visit the Guarani Community in Jaragua just outside of Sao Paulo. In coordination with the Archdiocesan Indigenous Pastoral Commission, the local health center personnel and with the community paige (religious leader), Mercy works with the women and children in this community offering a nutritional supplement program and an alphabetization program. She gets to know the needs of the community by visiting the homes of those who are involved in the programs she sponsors. Mercy lives in the downtown area of Sao Paulo and is also involved with the Fraternity of African Religious in Brazil which she organized a few years ago. The group has grown to over 40 members in the Sao Paulo area who meet regularly for spiritual input and mutual support.

Our Sisters in Brazil are vibrant with life and generous with their energies in service to the people of Brazil as they communicate God’s loving promise of life in abundance for all. Similar to my experience of God’s presence in the sun-soaked waves at the beach, my Sisters’ care and open warmth washed over me in profound blessing. Throughout my visit, I was welcomed by their gracious hospitality and nourished by their spirit – so indicative of the Maryknoll Sisters’ spirit around the world. I am deeply grateful.

– Sister Ann Hayden, MM

I have been working with children with cancer and their families for over 25 years. When I was studying in Penn State University Hospital in the United States, some families of children with leukemia had been surveyed because they lived near Three Mile Island at the time of the nuclear accident there.

After the Tokaimura nuclear accident, I met many more children from Ibaraki who had cancer at the Cancer Hospital in Tokyo. I have been asking several people connected with the media to try to get more information if there is a higher rate of cancer among children who have lived near the site of a nuclear accident, but no one is willing to do it. They tell me the political and economical issues are too delicate.

But now with this terrible Fukushima nuclear accident, I hope something can be done to help the whole world see how dangerous nuclear energy really is. One scientist has said, “If sunbeams were weapons we would have had solar energy decades ago.” The main reason nuclear energy is so much in use is because it can easily be converted into use for nuclear weapons.

When I went to the hospital to visit the children after the accident, they are very calm and resigned – they are already experiencing what the rest of us fear – cancer.

Can’t we please do all we can to help change our values so that we can help protect the future of the earth for our children?

At this time of Lent and repentance, one of my favorite prayers is: LAMB OF GOD YOU WHO TAKE AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD – HAVE MERCY ON US.

Besides our individual sins – we certainly all seem to share in preferring our own comfortable lifestyle now – rather than working to protect our earth for future generations.

Some people ask are you staying in Japan? “Don’t you want to leave?”

But this is my Home – this is where God wants me to be now.

— Sister Kathleen Reiley, MM