Pastoral Council inaugural meeting to be November30 By Kamille Maher
A newly constituted Archdiocesan Pastoral Council will
Murdered missioner's letters:
Sister Maura Clarke: We must not be afraid' By Liz Dossa
T Xwenty years ago Maryknoll Sister Maura Clarke agonized about her decision to leave Nicaragua where she had served forl7 years. She had taught school in a remote mining town and then ministered to the poorest of the poor in a barrio of Managua. But she felt she was being called to move. "I know I must go to El Salvador to see if it is right for me to be there as one of our Sisters there (Ita Ford) has been alone for some time," she wrote to her family in July 1980. Her words came to light this fall as her niece , Deirdre Keogh of Menlo Park , read through Maura 's letters to her family which had been untouched for 20 years. As she wrote to her parents, Sister Maura was quietly confident God would help her decide. Sister Ita needed someone with experience to do emergency work with refugees in a country chaotic with civil war. Sister Carol Ann Peitte , Sister Ita 's friend and coworker, had just drowned in a flash flood leaving Sister Ita deeply shaken and alone in her ministry. Sister Maura 's decision to join Sister Ita cost Maura her life. Five months after she went to El Salvador, Sisters Maura and Ita along with Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missioner Jean Donovan were kidnapped by five government soldiers, driven on dirt roads to a secluded woods, raped and shot. Last year the families of the four learned that the generals they believed had ordered the killings were within reach of U.S. courts. General Jose Guillermo Garcia, minister o! defense, and General Carlos Vides Casanova, director of the national guard, had retired to Florida. At lawyers' request, Deirdre began reading the letters to help build a case in the trial. Her mother, Julia, gave the letters to Deirdre because she found it too painful to read her sister's letters for the court case. Seeing her clear, careful handwriting again, reading her thoughts was both painful and fascinating for Deirdre. The image of her aunt that emerges is not that of an insurrectionist who might be dangerous to the dictatorship the U.S. supported at the time. The letters sketch the interior life of a woman absolutely dedicated to God. Her death flowed from the way she had lived , a woman totally absorbed by her mission and the people she served. The third-grade CCD teacher at Nativity Parish knew her aunt as a woman who was "out there." "We (our family) didn 't understand her then , but we do now," she said with wistful awe. "Maura was ' out there' as far as she could get, physically and religiously. We didn't understand what she was doing in Central America. We thought it was like an exotic vacation place. " Beginning at 15, Deirdre got to know her aunt when the Maryknoller was in the U.S. from 1976 to 1979 doing social justice work and community outreach in Boston and Washington, D.C. The woman who had been a Maryknoll Sister since 1953 SISTER MAURA, PAGE 11 had an otherworldly air to the teen-age Deirdre who had grown up in a comfortable,
ZJ convene for its inaugural meeting Nov. 30 at St. Mary 's JL JL Cathedral Conference Center, 1111 Gough St., San Francisco. The advisory body's membership has been selected and is comprised of 17 ex-officio members, 22 elected members and 20 alternates. These members are meant to be "keepers of the vision ," who have as their focus the "larger picture," explained Father David Pettingill , primary author and compiler of bylaws, which the Council of Priests approved in February. Archdiocesan pastoral councils are part of the governance structure of the Church and "the principal way in which the laity can participate in decisions at the diocesan level - just as parish councils do at the parish level," explained Archbishop William J. Levada. "Having a pastoral council in place when I came here would have been a very useful resource to implement the Pastoral Plan," the Archbishop noted. Goals of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council include enabling a broad cross section of the Archdiocese to participate in the governance of the Church , drawing from the experiences of persons from various cultural backgrounds and ministries as well as those who now serve on parish pastoral councils, officials said. An important role of the Pastoral Council will be to promote continuing implementation and updating of the archdiocesan pastoral plan, "A Journey of Hope Toward the New Millennium: The Pastoral Plan of the Pilgrim Church of San Francisco." The Pastoral Plan was begun in 1993 and promulgated in 1996. The Second Vatican Council document Christus Dominus states that the purpose of an archdiocesan pastoral council is "to investigate under the authority of the bishop all those things which pertain to pastoral works, to ponder them, and to propose practical conclusions about them." The APC is a consultative body presided over by the Archbishop, and is scheduledto convene three timesper year. Issues the council might consider, according to Father Pettingill , include how Vatican II should be implemented; how the Archdiocese can best reach youth, young adults, and the homebound; and how well the Archdiocese is fairing ecumenically. Ex-officio members include the Archbishop, auxiliary bishop, vicar general, vicar for administration, vicar for pastoral ministry, a representative dean from each county, superintendent of Catholic schools, and a representative from the executive committee of the Council of Priests. In addition to these, one member from the Catholic Charities board, the CYO board, the Board of Education, the Liturgical Commission, and the Ecumenical/Inter-religious Commission will be ex-officio members, the by-laws state. Elected membershipwill include a lay person from each deanery, an PASTORALCOUNCIL, page 3
No Catholic San Francisco next week In keeping with its annual schedule ,
Catholic San Francisco will not be published next week. The next issue will be dated Dec. 1. Advertisers and readers are reminded that both display and classified advertising deadline for that issue is noon on Nov. 20. The same deadline applies for "Datebook" submissions. For advertising information, call (415) 565-3699. For "Datebook ," fax (415) 565-3633.