What's Happening

September 5, 2017, Detroit – People of all faiths and all cultures are invited to an interfaith prayer service to celebrate International Peace Day. The prayer service will be at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, September 21, 2017, at St. Bonaventure Monastery Chapel, 1780 Mount Elliott, Detroit. 

The evening is sponsored by the Capuchin ministries, including the employees of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and Solanus Casey Center.  Security and lighted parking will be available.

Rochelle Riley, award-winning Detroit Free Press columnist and well-known Detroit activist, will speak on bringing peace to the people of Detroit. Also featured will be Naim Edwards, environmental specialist for the City of Detroit, who will offer a reflection on bringing peace to the Earth of Detroit. 

The St. Charles Praise Dancers and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen Choir will also perform. Refreshments will be served after the service.

Sister Nancyann Turner, OP, director of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen’s Rosa Parks Children’s Program, explained that the people of Greater Detroit are at a significant turning point. “For the sake of our country and the sake of our children, we all need to plant seeds and gardens of peace,” she said.

All who attend this prayer service will be invited to consider personal commitments to peace. Participants of this Peace Night will be joining millions of people throughout the world on this worldwide International Day of Peace.    

For information or directions, call Sally McCuen at 313-579-2100, ext.149.

August 30, 2017, Adrian, Michigan – A few weeks after the third anniversary of their displacement from their homes on the plain of Nineveh in Iraq due to the threat of ISIS, the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena of Iraq are beginning to return home – to face new challenges.

Sister Marie Therese Hanna, OP, former Prioress and member of the community’s General Council, gave an update on the lives of the Sisters following Mass August 30 at St. Catherine Chapel at the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse.

“Today we see the marvelous work of God,” she said. “The rebuilding process started. Many of the families returned to their homes in the two Christian cities, Telskuf and Qaraqush.” The Sisters are also beginning to return, living in small houses because of the extensive damage done to their convents, and are planning to open private schools. 

For the past three years, the Sisters had been living as internally displaced persons in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, reaching out through schools, clinics, and their very presence to other refugees also living in difficult situations. The Sisters and other residents of the Nineveh Plains area were able to return to their homes after the recent liberation of the area by Iraqi forces. However, they found their homes to be severely damaged.

Sister Marie Therese noted that her community faces external and internal challenges: destruction of their communities, the difficulty of change by leaving behind the lives they had led for three years. 

“What matters to us is to understand the will of god in our uncertain circumstances,” she said. “It is not important for us to have buildings or projects, but have mission and serve our people and accompany them because we have the same fate.”

In the past three years – with its drama, challenges, and hope – the Dominican Sisters felt the “powerful prayer” of their Dominican family in the United States. “On behalf of our Sister Clara, our Prioress General, and the Council and the Sisters, I want to thank you, Sister Patricia [Siemen], the Councilors, and each of you for your love, prayers, solidarity, and concern.”

For more information on the situation of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, of Iraq, read the update written by Sister Clara Nas, OP, Prioress, on the third anniversary of the ISIS attack, August 6, 2017.

Feature photo: Sister Marie Therese Hanna, OP, seated, left, met with the General Council of the Adrian Dominican Sisters: Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, seated right, and, standing, from left, Sisters Elise García, OP, Mary Margaret Pachucki, OP, Patricia Harvat, OP, and Frances Nadolny, OP.