Our Dominican Sisters legacy of commitment to Care of Earth includes protecting New Mexico people and natural resources.
Since 1925, well over 400 Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters have served in ministries throughout New Mexico, and scores of Sisters with family roots in New Mexico have served God’s people in Michigan, Peru, and beyond.
“The mission fields of New Mexico have enriched our Congregation in spirit, members, faith, and finances more than we could ever have imagined. We encountered the Holy in New Mexico…. Our collective experiences and transformation also affected those in Michigan and other parts of the world.”
Maureen Geary, OP
We view New Mexico as one of many mirrors reflecting our Congregation’s commitment to Care of Earth Corporate Stance and 2021 Directions in Ministry:
“We commit ourselves to seek right relationships with Earth, through ecological conversion of mind and heart, understanding that the Universe is sacred and interconnected.” We also affirm the Congregation’s commitment to study and implement strategies inspired by Pope Francis’ Encyclical, Laudato Si’, Caring for Our Common Home.
“We affirm that actions which impact the environment will be preceded by the question: Is this action which I (we) are performing supportive of the environment?”
“I think we are very much influenced by the landscape in which we live. We have huge open blue skies that move your soul. We have mountains that are always present and beautiful. We have sun all the time, even when it’s raining,” says Sister Eva Silva, OP. “Those experiences affect us and impact us in ways that we don’t even realize.”
In the 1920, the Congregation acquired, through a gift and a savvy land purchase, land in New Mexico including an area that was later fondly referred to as “the gravel pit.” This land held abundant saleable mineral and water resources and through effective management has provided for the Sisters over the years.
The Dominican Sisters mandate in all sales agreements that land they once owned cannot be used for the research, development, production or deployment of weapons. It is a condition that preserves our legacy of commitment to Care of Earth and Laudato Si’. We pray that our position and actions encourage others to be more thoughtful about land use.
Such a stipulation was in place when we sold the gravel pit to the City of Albuquerque, creating what is now the home for Albuquerque’s International Balloon Festival.
“When we were looking to sell the land, we were specific about whoever the buyer would be, that it would not be used in any way related to anything to do harm,” says Sister Eva, born, raised, and serving in New Mexico.
Moved to Protect New Mexico from Presence of Nuclear Weapons
We are called to join the river of justice and peace, to take up climate and ecological justice, and to speak out with and for communities most impacted by climate injustice and the loss of biodiversity.
Dominican Sisters ~ Grand Rapids
Faith Leaders Need to Step Up Call to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
As published by CatholicWorker.org February 22, 2024
Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, addressed the immorality of nuclear weapons and the moral imperative to abolish them in his sermon at the Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, sponsored by the Dorothy Day Guild, at Our Savior Church in New York City. The event was held on November 29, 2023—the anniversary of Day’s death—and Wester cited Day’s early witness against nuclear weapons. Wester called on faith leaders, and Catholics in particular, to step up efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.
How did it go so wrong more than thirty years after the end of the first nuclear arms race? How is it that we are now arguably in an even more dangerous nuclear arms race? The good-ol’-days of the past Cold War look simple now with its Mutually Assured Destruction, which nevertheless like its acronym MAD was actually insane. Things are arguably even more risky today given today’s multiple nuclear actors, new cyber threats, new hypersonic weapons and the advent of artificial intelligence. How do we get out of this unprecedented danger?
Nuclear weapons are deeply immoral because of their indiscriminate killing of women, children, noncombatants, the old, the newborn and the infirm. In peacetime they rob resources from the needy and the poor. I believe that the Catholic Church, however imperfectly we follow our savior Jesus Christ, should take up nuclear disarmament as a critical pro-life issue. To me that is common sense when one nuclear weapon can kill millions and inflict incalculable suffering upon the living. ~ Archbishop John Wester
