By Bridget Spinks
TWO Josephites, Sr Angela Carroll and Sr Christine Symonds, gave a presentation at the Catholic Pastoral Centre in Highgate on 17 November about how the work of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop has been continuing in Peru since 1981.
Sr Angela Carroll, originally from Queensland, has spent the last 16 years on mission in Peru.
She entered the Josephites as an 18 year old in 1959 and was professed in 1962, following in the footsteps of her sister who entered four years earlier.
After several years teaching primary and secondary school, she went to Peru in 1984. Today, there are 12 Josephites in Peru: two from New Zealand, two from Peru and eight from Australia.
They are spread out across Tarma, Pucallpa, Motupe, Pitumarca and Lima and work in human development and sacramental programmes.
The mission hasn’t been easy; there have been times of hunger and terrorism.
In 1988 and 1990, when the country was suffering inflation during the time of the ‘black budget’, the local people should have died of starvation, Sr Angela said.
They didn’t because of the way the food was rationed.
The Josephites worked with Caritas and the local ‘popular organisations’ to distribute food.
In the 1980s, the Communist Party of Peru popularly known as the ‘Shining Path’ would bomb electric light installations.
A casualty of the terrorism was West Australian Josephite Sr Irene McCormack, who was shot in the back of the head in May 1991.
Since the tragedy, the Sisters have no longer had a presence in Huasa Huasi.
In 1998, after working with it in Lima, Sr Angela took the family catechetics programme to Pitumarca.
The programme is structured so that when the children meet for scripture, games and hymns, the parents also meet for a class.
Local catechists run the course and the Sisters’ role is to “accompany” these groups and individuals.
“We do as little as we can ourselves and only go out the front when we’re asked,” Sr Angela said.
“It’s a presence thing. You try not to be the head of anything. We promote leadership among the locals by offering support,” she said.
The parish priest translated the course into the local dialect, Quechua, and Sr Angela picked local catechists to help teach it.
The programme works on developing the relationship between husband and wife, and between parents and children.
It empowers women to have a voice at home when they are threatened by machismo and the effect of alcohol: topic number four in the programme is Women also have value. Sr Angela said one response from the group was, “We really like this; how come nobody ever told us that before?”
For 15 years, children have been visiting the Josephite centre on Sundays for games and hot milk with porridge. Through the week the children are brought in after school for reading classes and to play with jigsaw puzzles.
“It’s to promote the importance of playtime,” Sr Angela said.
For three hours a week, the Josephites give them a childhood; otherwise they are out mining, Sr Christine Symonds said.
Sr Christine, who is based in North Perth, recently went to Peru for a visit.
For the last four years, she has been selling Peruvian made handicrafts coordinated by the Josephites in Peru for Ethica, a not-for-profit organisation founded by the Josephite congregation to market the goods that are made in Peru to Australians.
As part of the human development programmes, the Sisters organise co-operatives in Peru to help locals produce handicrafts such as finger puppets, scarves and bags that can be sold to an Australian market through Ethica.
The project started with a small group and now there are over 200 women in four communities – two are on the outskirts of Lima and two more in remote mountain areas.
Casabet is in Lima and is probably the biggest.
They produce all the handbags and small purses.
Cruz de Motupe is also on the outskirts of Lima. It is a very poor and marginalised area.
The women do the work at home while they look after the children and come back once the product is finished.
They made all the wristbands sold for World Youth Day at Mary MacKillop Place.
They also make hats, gloves, hair-bands and beautiful Christmas tree skirts. Pitumarca is in the Andes in southern Peru.
They use hand-spun sheep’s wool tinted with dyes from local plants. This is the region that produces the traditional hats with earflaps. They also produce the alpaca scarves, shawls and finger puppets.
Tarma is about six hours from Lima. The women meet every week and make colourful children’s scarves and hats.
On the day of the presentation, Sr Christine Symonds set up an Ethica market of Peruvian handicrafts at the Catholic Pastoral Centre.
Around 20 people attended the morning tea to hear Sr Angela Carroll share her experiences of the mission in Peru and the market raised over $1,000.
But Sr Christine, who has been the local Perth liaison for Ethica for the last four years, is moving on to Penola next year to provide pastoral support for the volunteers at the Mary MacKillop Centre.
For Sr Christine, selling these goods at the back of parishes is a hobby – “it’s my bit for the poor,” she said – since her full time job is at the Mary MacKillop Centre.
She said she is grateful to the parishes for their support of the sale of the goods but is looking for volunteers to help carry it on in the future. “The success of Ethica depends on the markets in Australia,” she said.
Sr Angela said that what the Josephites do in Peru is offer their presence. “It’s seeing the need and responding when we can. We talk about helping the person to grow in dignity. We empower networking,” she said.
By the Josephites’ presence, Peruvians are seeing other ways for women to live with dignity.
“It’s just a little glimpse,” she said.
To support the Josephite mission in Peru visit www.ethica.org.au