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January 24, 2023, Adrian, MichiganThe General Council of the Adrian Dominican Sisters expressed grief at the brutality of the two recent episodes of mass shootings in California and stand in solidarity and prayer with the victims and their families. Below is their statement. 

We are horrified and grieving at the brutality and increased incidence of gun violence in our nation. Shooting sprees in California over a two-day period, beginning on the Lunar New Year, have taken the lives of 11 people in the largely Asian American community of Monterey Park and seven individuals believed to be Chinese farm workers in Half Moon Bay. The rampage in Monterey Park is the deadliest in this new year, yet one of 39 mass shootings of four or more people injured or killed in just the first four weeks of 2023 that have claimed the lives of 69 people. It is a “striking explosion of violence across a range of sites in nearly every corner of the nation,” as the New York Times reports, citing data gathered by the Gun Violence Archive.

We stand in sorrowful prayer, solidarity and heartache with our brothers and sisters in the Asian American community and with all others suffering the impact of violent crime in our nation. As people of faith, we believe in the right to life and inherent dignity of all human beings. As citizens of a nation founded on the rule of law, we look on the epidemic gun violence and easy access to weapons as threatening our people’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We call on Congress to enact sweeping gun safety and control legislation, including a renewal of the ban on assault weapons.

Members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ General Council are Sisters Elise D. García, OP, Prioress; Janice Brown, OP, and Bibiana “Bless” Colasito, OP, General Councilors; Lorraine Réaume, OP, Vicaress; and Corinne Sanders, OP, General Councilor.


Adrian Dominican Sisters Logo

November 25, 2022, Adrian, MichiganThe General Council of the Adrian Dominican Sisters issued the following statement in observance of the United Nations’ International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women, November 25, 2022.

As a community of women of faith with a global presence – in the United States, Dominican Republic, Philippines and Norway – we join in observing the United Nations’ International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women, and call for an end to gender-based violence in our world. 

We are especially mindful of the courageous women in Iran who have been engaged in daily protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died in police custody days after her arrest on September 13, while visiting family in Tehran, for allegedly wearing her head scarf or hijab “improperly.” As The New York Times reported later that month, “Tossing head scarves into bonfires, dancing bareheaded before security agents, young women have been at the forefront of these demonstrations, supplying the defining images of defiance.” 

Despite brutal crackdowns and the arrest of more than 16,000 people, the protests continue. According to Iran Human Rights, at least 416 people have been killed, including 51 children and 27 women, and hundreds more injured in gruesome videotaped police beatings. The woman journalist, Niloufar Hamedi, who first brought attention to Amini’s story, is among 48 journalists, including 18 women, held under arrest. 

Valuing human dignity and aware of the injustice of patriarchy which maintains the subordinate status of women and girls throughout the world, we stand in solidarity with the courageous women of Iran, and the men who support them, in their decades-long cry for gender equality. We pray for their safety and for the uplifting of their inherent rights and dignity – and those of all women and girls around the world – beloved by God and made in God’s image. 

The General Assembly adopted this day of observation in honor of three heroic sisters in the Dominican Republic – Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal – who resisted the reign of terror of then-dictator Rafael Trujillo. Under his order, they were brutally murdered on November 25, 1960. The Mirabal sisters, also known as Las Mariposas (the Butterflies), have become international symbols of popular and feminist resistance against oppression. 

Members of the General Council of the Adrian Dominican Sisters are Sisters Elise D. García, OP, Prioress; Lorraine Réaume, OP, Vicaress; and Corinne Sanders, OP, Janice Brown, OP, and Bibiana Colasito, OP. 

 


 

 

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