NCR: Roy Bourgeois’ priesthood can never truly end

WOC’s petition urging Maryknoll to support Fr. Bourgeois was mentioned in this NCR article.

Roy Bourgeois’ priesthood can never truly end
By Jamie L Manson

He won a purple heart for his service in Vietnam.

He lived and worked among the poor in Bolivia for five years.

When his friends, Maryknoll sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, along with two other women, were raped and murdered in El Salvador, he became an outspoken opponent of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.

He has served nearly five years in federal prison for non-violent protests.

And now Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been told that he no longer has a place in the community of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.

For more than a hundred years, the name Maryknoll has been synonymous with ministries of justice, peace, and care for the world’s most marginalized. But, as is the case with so many church institutions, their fight for justice is a strictly external exercise. These days there seems to be little possibility for justice to roll down within the internal structures of the Catholic church.

Few Roman Catholic priests in this country today have risked as much as Bourgeois has to live out the gospel. He answered Jesus’ call to be a peacemaker; he has an insatiable hunger and thirst for righteousness.

To read more, click here .