What's Happening

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.

November 14, 2018, Adrian, Michigan – The day before her departure to Iraq, Sister Rose Ann Schlitt, OP, spoke to WTOL-TV reporter Tyler Paley about the mission of solidarity that she and two other Dominican women were about to undertake. Sister Rose Ann, Adrian Dominican Sister Nancy Jurecki, OP, and Gloria Escalona, of the Dominican Laity of the St. Albert the Great Province, hope to be a presence of support and solidarity to the Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of St. Catherine of Iraq. The Sisters from Iraq, after ISIS drove them out of their convents and ministries on the Nineveh Plains, spent three years as internally displaced persons, ministering with other refugees. They returned to their homes last year to find their churches and convents demolished by ISIS. Watch the interview with Tyler Paley. You may also follow the delegation on Facebook. 

Read more about the delegation here.