What's Happening

June 2, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – A recent article in The Daily Telegram, newspaper of Adrian, Michigan, recounts the story of Sister Barbara Cervenka, OP, and her commitment to creating 1,000 paintings of origami cranes. Drawing from the Japanese tradition of folding 1,000 cranes for peace or health, Sister Barbara took on the task of painting the cranes to raise funds for the ministry of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena in Iraq to thousands of Christians and other minorities who were in refugee camps in northern Iraq. They had been driven out of their homes on the Nineveh Plains in Iraq by ISIS. Read the full article by News Editor David Panian.

March 1, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – Three U.S. Dominican women gave a report during a February 17 webinar on their experiences as members of a delegation to the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Iraq. Adrian Dominican Sisters Rose Ann Schlitt, OP, and Nancy Jurecki, OP, and Gloria Escalona, a member of the Dominican Laity, spoke of their November visit to the Sisters. 

The Dominican Sisters from Iraq returned to their homes on the Plains of Nineveh after having been expelled in August 2014 by fighters of the Islamic State. The Sisters lived in internal displacement camps in Northern Iraq with thousands of other refugees. Members of the delegation provide background on these events and on the destruction and ruin of homes and churches that the Sisters discovered upon their return home. 

The webinar was facilitated by Sister Patricia Farrell, OP, Executive Director of the Dominican Sisters Conference. 

Watch the webinar and forward to the two-minute mark of the video, where the actual presentation begins. In the early part of the webinar, reference is made to the Most Reverend Mar Barnaba Yousif Habash, Bishop of the Syrian Catholic Church in the United States. However, the man pictured in the presentation is Bishop Yohanno Petros Moshe, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan in Iraq.