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By Root 1066 0

minister to the poorest and most rejected people on earth, regardless of their faith. The saintly Father Michael, whom I met in the Buddhist AIDS hospice in Thailand, is a Maryknoll. And, as I remembered from my days as a college campus activist, two Maryknoll nuns were among four Catholic missionaries who were raped and murdered by a death squad in El Salvador in 1980 as a warning to those who would advocate for the poor. During the civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, Catholic priests and nuns were often persecuted for siding with the people in the struggle for human rights and economic justice. Another exceedingly blatant attack occurred when the archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, was gunned down by an assassin while serving mass in his chapel.

Sadly, the prelate who later stepped into Romero’s position represented a far more conservative faction in the Church. I had met with Archbishop Fernando Sáenz Lacalle during a quick trip I had made to a regional AIDS conference in El Salvador in November 2005 to try to open a dialogue about the Church’s stance on prevention. He was cordial, but it was clear that his ears were firmly closed to any discussion about reproductive health. He even said during the meeting that he thought women used abortion as birth control. He also held to the hard line that Rome had adopted against condom use, even to prevent HIV infection. I was unsurprised, given the Vatican official who in 2003 had said something equally ridiculous: that HIV can pass through condoms. Thank goodness that in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are justifiable in limited cases, in order to prevent AIDS. A modest statement based on the public health reality, but quite revolutionary from the Vatican’s previous hard-line stance.

I couldn’t help but contrast the rigidity of the Salvadoran archbishop with the loving pragmatism of these luminous Maryknoll nuns. Sisters Dee and Marlene told me that they believed that in each person, dignity inheres, and that dignity entitles them to bodily, sexual, and reproductive autonomy. Proyecto Vida provides condom education with PSI’s help. Whether or not they want people to use them, the nuns believe that people have the right to know how to protect themselves and they, and they alone, without interference from a patriarchal superstructure, must be empowered to make that choice.

The mission of the Maryknoll sisters is simply “to make God’s love visible.” I saw their work in action in the women who worked for Proyecto Vida, such as Luz Imelda Lucas. Luz had lost an infant to AIDS, as well as her husband, who had infected them. She was brought back from the brink of death with antiretroviral medication made available by Doctors Without Borders. Now, she worked as a nutritionist. She told me her service to other vulnerable women filled the void these losses had created. I was also introduced to a married couple, both of them HIV-positive, whose bittersweet story was heartrending. Melchor and Catalina had come to the clinic to deliver their second child by cesarean section in order to protect it from contracting HIV in childbirth. Their first baby, delivered naturally, had died of AIDS. As with many couples, it took the death of a child to alert them to the fact that they were HIV-positive.

Melchor, a compactly built man with sun-leathered skin, told me he became infected when he lived in Guatemala City and ran with a fast crowd. Even though many of his friends were becoming sick, he had never been taught how one contracted HIV and had no idea how to recognize its symptoms. When his own health started to fail, he thought his fevers were caused by colds. And so, unknowingly, he brought the virus back home to his young wife. She was sitting quietly next to him as he spoke, great with child and wiping her face with a handkerchief, in palpable fear of the impending procedure. I leaned gently toward her and said, “Don’t worry. I was delivered by C-section and I turned out okay.” That brought a small smile to her lips. She was also reassured that her baby would be