Loretto Actively Engaged in Helping To Create More Just, Peaceful World

Article 40 of I Am the Way, Loretto’s Constitutions, says, “Cooperation with others engaged in creating a more just and peaceful world is crucial to fruitful mission.”

This week we highlight some of the myriad ways Loretto is actively engaged to help create a more just and peaceful world. Among the major focuses of Loretto’s work for justice and peace today is the Community’s commitment to acknowledge and recognize the “othered,” those individuals and groups among us and throughout the world who have been historically rejected, scorned or excluded. February, which encompasses the annual monthlong celebration of Black History Month along with Valentine’s Day, brings to mind how even the smallest of loving actions can bring peace to broken hearts and the lives of all the “othered.” This month is not just for the sentimentalists among us, but for all to see what the power of love in action can do when it is genuine, sincere and direct. 

The Loretto Community condemns racism and systemic oppression in all forms. The Community is working to understand our complicity in systemic racism. We can better atone and change by knowing the truths of our past.

We acknowledge that we must continue to do our own work, as individuals and as a Community, to ensure that we do not unconsciously repeat the sins of the past. Instead, we want to move forward with open eyes and heart, in a search for truth and healing. Listening to systemically dispossessed peoples is how we learn. We want to experience what justice looks like in our day. 

Visit our Facebook page (or read the posts here on the website) this week for examples of Loretto’s continuing efforts to raise awareness of the people we have othered, especially our Black brothers and sisters. Posts feature our work with the Black Lives Matter movement and the continuing research by Loretto Sister Annie Stevens on Loretto’s involvement in slavery. Featured also is the work of Loretto Link’s Good Trouble Working Group, a strong supporter of the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC), as is Loretto as a whole. Standing with the PPC allows Loretto to work with a Black-led, faith-based organization that encourages people from all walks of life to participate and work together. Loretto’s support of the PPC has been instrumental in helping the Community to grow in its awareness of the relationship between problems such as poverty, systemic racism, the war economy, climate change, voter suppression and unfair incarceration. Loretto stands with the PPC in committing to confront these injustices with the nonviolent principles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.