Catholic New World: The Interview

Congregation brings passion for life to the UN

Passionist Father Kevin Dance, an Australian native, didn’t really know what he was getting into when he urged his community to get involved in the United Nations. He just knew that with an increasingly global society, issues such as human rights and poverty need a global response. Now, six years after advocating for a Passionist presence at the UN, Dance and Passionist Sister Mary Ann Strain are ready to get the official status they need to give the Passionists a voice.

They spoke with Michelle Martin on a recent visit to Chicago.

The Catholic New World: How did the idea of having a Passionist representative to the United Nations come about?

FKD: I guess it grew from a meeting of the Passionists in Brazil in the year 2000. We believed if we exposed ourselves to the wider realities of the world, we might come up with some different sorts of questions and some different decisions.

One of the keynote addresses that set the tone was on globalization, and what are the issues around globalization, and what does it say to us as the church and us as a religious community within the church. With the various opportunities we had to see of life in the raw in Brazil, there was the feeling that we needed to I guess be open to what John Paul II had said, we need to find new aereopagi—the marketplace in Athens where Paul proclaimed the Good News—the new marketplaces in today’s world to speak the Gospel, perhaps in different ways.

One of the decisions was that if we take globalization seriously, which means that the national borders don’t really deal with the realities of life, then we need to find a new place to stand and a new way to speak. It seemed that the United Nations, for all its shortcomings, is the one instrument in the whole world whereby all the nations of the world can come together as equals to thresh out the issues, to debate, to argue, to try and provide a new way forward by way of laws or mutual cooperation. So we felt it was time that we had a tiny little say and add our voice to the conversation.

TCNW: How quickly did that happen?

FKD: The timing was extraordinary. I was asked and accepted just 10 days before Sept. 11. I was asked whether I would be willing to go and take the necessary steps to implement this vision and decision. I said yes I would, because I’d been pretty outspoken about the need for us to make justice much more of a focus of the Passionist mission as we made our way forward. I arrived in December 2001, and I had to start from scratch. We had nothing and I knew nothing about how to go about it.

To be faithful to the inclusive vision of our chapter, we had to create a new body that reflects that we are composed of women and men, religious and lay, and so we created a new body which was incorporated and is called Passionists International. You have to be incorporated for two years before they will grant you that consultative status. We come up to that in early 2006, and we will apply to be able to function in our own right.

In the meantime, I have operated by the graciousness of other religious communities, who have given me a place on their ticket to get a badge to be able to function.

TCNW: What have you learned?

FKD: That the world’s a mess. That the world is a place of infinite possibility. That the best and the worst of humanity finds its way to the United Nations. That it’s the largest bureaucracy in the world. That it is possible—I have witnessed it with my own eyes—to see the least, the poorest, the most vulnerable people be able to have their voice heard in that forum, and to encourage the big decisions that are made as far as policies that shape the future of the world to be shaped by compassion.

There is a possibility with great levels of frustration to have some influence.

TCNW: What would you like to influence the UN to do?

Sister Mary Ann Strain: From the experience of my own religious community, with the poorest people of the world, who can’t work—make the voices of those people heard. This is really idealistic, but I would want to make the concerns of the people and the needs of these people to be considered as important as the needs of you and me and other people who live here. In Botswana, where our sisters work, we have the highest infection rate of HIV and the government is doing some very positive things. I try to create a connect between the lives of those people and the people I work with at a retreat center in West Hartford (Conn.) who are basically very well off, to help them to be aware of people who live in another part of the world who are in some ways just like them, but who are struggling with problems they can’t begin to imagine.

FKD: I would like to personalize the discussion, whether it’s economic issues, HIV/AIDS, the exploitation of people, to give a human face to all of that. I think that’s one gift that we can bring to the discussions: the experience of people who are working on the ground in countries around the world. To remind them to please don’t ever forget that people must be at the center of what we are doing, and people must find a place at the table for decision that affect them. And we’d be calling for a re-alignment in the paradigm, the development paradigm that operates in the world. Everything is slated against the south and towards the north, when in fact the majority of the population lives in the south.

SMAS: And it’s a very young population.

TCNW: How does working at the UN connect to your faith?

FKD: Sort of confessional stuff—talking in religious language—is not in. Issues of morality and issues of ethics and recovering the values that underlay a compassionate and decent, a human sort of approach to life—they’re gaining a new currency in the UN, which is very interesting. There’s talk about needing to find a new ethic for our way forward. Individualism has led to rampant competition. We have to learn a new language to express our deepest hopes and concerns and our passions. Jesus came to bring hope to the poor, liberty to captives. That’s what it is, and you do it in every conceivable way that you can.

TCNW: Is the world ready to take on poverty in the developing world?

FKD: We need to change even the language of the developed and the developing worlds, because inequality in wealth exists not only between countries but increasingly within countries. Katrina showed us that. …

St. Basil the Great said if you have two coats in your closet, and someone has no coat, that second coat doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the poor person. It is no longer adequate or morally acceptable to talk about this as an act of charity. It is an act of justice. All along, the north—the developed, industrialized world, has acted as if it’s out of the goodness of their hearts that they do these things, when we can no longer see it that way. The theme of the millennium development goals says for the first time in human history, we have the capacity to eradicate poverty, so now it becomes a moral and ethical responsibility to do it.

I guess part of our responsibility would be to keep their feet to the fire.

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