Finding and teaching faith in the rainforest
Maryknoll Sister Melinda Roper was born in Chicago and raised in Park Ridge, but she has spent most of her adult life living in rural areas of southern Mexico, Guatemala and Panama. A 1955 graduate of St. Scholastica Academy, Roper said she has found an opportunity to share her love of liturgy, prayer and contemplation in a missionary life.
At the same time, she and the three Maryknoll sisters she lives with outside of Santa Fe, Panama, must deal with the more mundane details of life; the Hackett Foundation of Clinton, N.J., recently gave the sisters an $18,000 grant to buy a new pickup truck to replace their 1997 model. Vehicles in their area of Panama generally last only about five years, what with the unpaved roads, rain, mud and the tropical humidity of the rainforest.
Roper spoke by telephone with staff writer Michelle Martin while she was recovering from back surgery in Maryknoll, N.Y.
The Catholic New World: When did you decide you wanted to join a religious community, especially a missionary community?
Sister Melinda Roper: I would say it was between my senior year at St. Scholastica and the next couple of years. I went to Michigan State for two years, and that was when I really decided.
TCNW: What made you want to enter Maryknoll?
SMR: Thats always like a new question every time somebody asks me.
At St. Scholastica, I learned to love the liturgy, to love worship. I was kind of quiet, and I like meditation and contemplation. But I wanted to combine thatI wanted to share that and be of service in some way. The Benedictines at St. Scholastica saw that and introduced me to Maryknoll.
TCNW: Where was your first assignment for Maryknoll?
SMR: In 1963, they sent me to Guatemala. I stayed there and in Mexico until 1969. Then I came back and got my degree at Loyola (in Chicago). In 1971, I went back to Mexico. I was always in the Mayan areasYucatan, Chiapas. Then in 1978 I came back to Maryknoll and served on the leadership team for the congregation for six years, and after that I went to Panama.
TCNW: When you first went to Guatemala as a young woman, did you speak any Spanish?
SMR: No. But I was young; I figured I could always learn as I went along. I still dont have any specific profession. For me, thats an advantage as a missionary, because Im open to trying anything. Ill jump in and learn how to do it.
The whole experience of learning another language, learning another way of being, even another way of being with God and faith.
Thats been one of the great, great gifts of being a missioner.
TCNW: What do you do in Panama?
SMR: The area where we are is kind of a rainforest colonization area. When we first went there, it was an eight-hour, or 10-hour, or 12-hour drive over unpaved roads to get to where we lived, very few stores, things like that. One of the interesting things for us was there was no formal Catholic church in our area. Maybe once a year, a priest would come through.
So we were four missionary sisters, and we started out as part of a mission team with a Claretian priest and brother who live about 1 hours away.
We began just trying to get to know the people, the indigenous people and the people who came there from other parts of Panama and to do basic evangelization. They didnt even celebrate Holy Week or Christmas.
We formed church, in many different understandings of the word. Eventually the people built a church in the main town, and we walked with them through that whole process.
TCNW: Once the church was built, where did you turn your attention?
SMR: After 11 years of that, we decided to start a pastoral center. We got into a whole new sense of mission as we began to learn about the value of the rainforest, the biodiversity, and the need to preserve it. By that time, the rainforest in that area was pretty much destroyed by the agriculture.
We began all different kinds of projects
the center is meant to be a quiet place of reflection, where people can enjoy the beauty of the rainforest. Many of the people see the rainforest as the enemy, something in the way, or just something to be used for its resources. All of these folks see the forest as something to be conquered.
TCNW: What role does faith play in your efforts?
SMR: Its a constant revelation of God to us. When we look around, we see that traditional means of organizing human communities have failed us. Ive been here since September, and when I watch television or look at the newspaper its quite a violent atmosphere that were living in here, from war to people trying to destroy each other verbally.
The whole electionuntil I came back, I hadnt heard either Bush or Kerry speak. Lets just say I didnt find it life-giving.
The whole community of life has much to teach the human community in a very life-giving way. There are three key wordsand I didnt make this up, it came from Dorothy Day or Peter Maurin. Theres cultivate, thats the land; culture, thats the human community; and cult, thats worship, and those three words all have the same root. Theyre interrelated.
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