![]() ![]() The sugar cane cutters, among the poorest of the Philippines, eked out barely livable wages and were allowed hospital care only when surplus beds were available. Again, she found herself in a hospital run by her order, but it was largely supported by a wealthy Philippine sugar cane producing family and was providing health care to the company’s full time workers.Ĭlass divisions became quickly evident. Her request eventually granted, she moved to the central Philippines and landed on an island where sugar cane was the main crop and industry. Grenough at first worked in a Manila hospital, but asked to work in the rural Philippines. ![]() Like so many others, she went to convert and ended up converted, largely by applying the Vatican II mission documents then spreading throughout the church. Six years later, at age 30, she was off to the Philippines where her views on mission work, like many of her colleagues at the time, would morph as she came into increased contact with the poor. It was in 1956 at the age of 23 the adventurous Grenough first joined Maryknoll. “We hope this material will encourage parishes, dioceses and individuals to start peer support programs, and generate a wider church response,” she explained. She’s received modest financial support from Catholic Relief Services and CAFOD, the British Catholic aid agency, to print 1,000 copies. One of Grenough’s latest education efforts has involved the writing and publishing of a manual, “Call to Me,” aimed at examining HIV/AIDS from various biblical based perspectives: sexuality, sex, health, healing, discrimination, grief, death, and gender violence. Only the politically and socially astute stand a chance to move their agendas forward in either the church or wider society. Foreign Catholic religious must live under the radar in this Buddhist country run by hard-headed generals. She’s traveled an arduous and crooked road. Grenough then helped form the Yangon-based Myanmar Catholic HIV/AIDS Network, a small resource limited team that would work together to reduce HIV/AIDS stigma while increasing awareness, prevention and care. “I felt that we needed to educate our church, not only about human sexuality and HIV/AIDS, but about the need for us, as Christians, to reach out and serve the neediest and rejected persons in society.” ![]() She wrote, requesting permission to translate materials into Burmese. Once settled in Burma, Grenough contacted a British nonprofit organization, Strategies for Hope, which had been promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and teaching practical actions necessary to combat the disease. She set out to change minds and build awareness much needed to teach prevention and provide care. As in other parts of Asia and elsewhere at the time, it was still very much a taboo topic. Grenough told me in an interview in Yangon, Burma, earlier this year that she decided she had one more move left in her, leaving the Philippines for Burma in 2005 after hearing how the HIV/AIDS epidemic was spreading there while little was being done to combat it by the Burmese government or by non-government groups. She turns a young 82 today, having served nearly 40 years in the Philippines 10 in Burma (Myanmar). Grenough is one of nine in her Maryknoll entrance class still in active ministry. These women have been as persistent as they have been faithful to their religious callings, many for more than six decades. religious women radicalized in the wake of Vatican II. Mary Grenough could well be a poster child for a generation of U.S. Her early spirituality shaped in high school by the Sisters of Loretto and her world views molded in the Philippines as a missioner, Maryknoll Sr.
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