The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family: African American Missionaries to the Garifuna of Belize

Chapter 8: Withdrawal from Belize

125 C h a p t e r 8 Withdrawal from Belize Due to the shortage of new vocations, by the early 1990s the number of Holy Family Sisters assigned to Belize had been reduced from five to four, yet their workload had expanded to include pastoral and youth ministry, daily ministry to the aged, and programs for nontraditional students in the CYE program. One sister still served as principal at Sacred Heart School. All other teaching and administrative positions, however, not only at Sacred Heart but at the other elementary schools that the sisters had previously established were now in the hands of lay people, most of whom were graduates of the congregation’s pupilteacher training center. One sister was working full-time in ministry to the elderly, and another had relinquished her position at Ecumenical High School in order to give her full attention to the CYE. In 1990, Sisters Hortensia and Clare were the only Holy Family members still teaching at Ecumenical, but by the end of 1992 both had been reassigned to the United States and henceforth no more sisters served as full-time faculty at the school. In short, it was obvious that the sisters in Belize had overextended themselves. If they were to avoid burning themselves out, they would have to streamline their workload, retaining what was most valuable to the people of Dangriga and eliminating what was least important or what could be done by others. With this in mind, the four sisters in Dangriga began a process of discernment in the latter months of 1991, which included prayer, 126  The Post-Vatican II Years­ in-house reading and discussion of Pope John Paul II’s mission documents , in-house dialogue relating to personal experiences and observations , and discussion with the local lay community. The latter included a questionnaire that the sisters drew up and distributed to Dangriga residents ranging in age from “teenager” to “over 50 years old.”1 Sister Clare also conducted interviews with a group of sixthstandard students from Sacred Heart School,2 a second group from Ecumenical High, and six selected adults. The latter included two men and a woman who were listed as teachers at Ecumenical High, a woman who was described as a “nurse, parent, and lay minister,”­ another woman listed as “a teacher, parent, and leader of Garifuna culture,” and a man who was described as a “teacher, parish council presi­ dent, and leader of Garifuna culture.”3 When the discernment process was concluded and results from the questionnaire and interviews were recorded and analyzed, the Dangriga sisters sent a ten-page document to the motherhouse in New Orleans. It began with the following “Statement of Purpose”: In his encyclical, Apostolic Letter to the Religious of Latin America, Pope John Paul II stressed the necessity of the presence of religious communities in developing nations. His Holiness praised missionaries, past and present, for their evangelizing efforts . . . [and] stated that religious communities must continue to spread the Good News throughout the world and now, more that ever, [their] presence . . . in Third World countries is crucial. In view of the Church’s stress on the need for Religious Institutes to serve the people in developing nations, we are submitting to you this paper. Its purpose is to inform you of what we have assessed, with the help of the Church here, to be the needs of the people in this area. We pray that this information will serve the people of Belize in accordance with the mandate of Pope John Paul II.4 The sisters next included a paragraph that briefly encapsulated all that they had achieved in their ninety-plus years in Dangriga. Highlighted were the schools they had formed, including the Pupil-Teacher Train- Withdrawal from Belize   127 ing Center, and the vocations they had fostered not only in their own community but to the priesthood as well.5 Next came the crux of the matter. How should the sisters approach their mission commitment with fewer sisters available for work in a Belize that no longer resembled the country served by earlier generations of Holy Family nuns? Our numerical presence is diminished to four but the imperative of our call continues into the nineties. The Belize of 1991 is quite different from our foresisters’ experience. . . . With the advent of Belize’s independence just a decade ago and because of close Belizean-U.S. ties via...