The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia

Aston, PA — On the weekend of November 17-19, twelve members of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia will travel from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, California, and Georgia to join thousands of others in Columbus, Georgia. Joining them will be students from Neumann College in Aston, Pennsylvania, as well as college students from Athens, Georgia. Their goal? To call for the closure of the controversial School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC).

Sisters attending the gathering include Sister

• Catherine O'Donnell – Media, PA
• Miriam Eileen Murray – Brookhaven, PA
• Dominica Lo Bianco –Aston, PA
• Eileen Walsh – Aston, PA
• Jean Rupertus – Glen Riddle, PA
• Doris Johnson – Glen Riddle, PA
• Mary Kathryn Dougherty – Wilmington, DE (accompanying students from Neumann College)
• Joan Morris –Athens, GA (accompanying students from Georgia)
• Kathleen O'Donnell – Wilmington, DE
• Marie Lucey – Hyattsville, MD
• Kathleen McCabe  – Alameda, CA
• Maureen Duigan  – Alameda, CA

Also accompanying the Franciscan group is Ms. Maria Orlindini from New Mexico.                

The SOA/WHINSEC, located at the Fort Benning, Georgia, is a U.S.–taxpayer-financed combat training facility for Latin American security personnel. It made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion, and execution. Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place.

A growing movement of human rights groups, clergy, laity, students, veterans, unionists, and many others will converge in Georgia this weekend, demanding that this training camp be shut down.  SOA graduates continue to be implicated in civilian-targeted killings throughout Latin America. For hundreds of thousand of Latin Americans, this school is a symbol of torture and failed U.S. foreign policy and is out of line with the values of everyday Americans. The path to lasting peace and security can only be found if we implement foreign policy that reflects our ideals of justice and democracy.

To learn more about the SOA, visit www.soaw.org. To learn about the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and their involvement in this and other justice-related issues, visit our website, www.osfphila.org.