Sri Lanka Nuns, Priests and Brothers hold ‘Dreams for Peace’ convention
[UCAN] Nuns from various Catholic women’s congregations stressed the need to inform the public about the truth on this troubled island rather than leave them to rely on the “lies” of the media.
The Women’s Desk of the Inter-Congregational Conference gathered 350 nuns, 100 priests and brothers, and 160 laypeople to discuss the civil war and how to improve the chances of peace through better communication and an emphasis on the truth.
Our Struggle and Dreams for Peace, as the national convention was titled, ran Feb. 22-24.
The Women’s Desk, representing six women’s congregations, held the convention in the auditorium of Good Shepherd Convent in Kotahena, on the northern outskirts of Colombo.
Participants included Oblate Bishop Norbert Andradi of Anuradhapura and guests of other faiths and religions: Bishop Duleep de Chickera, the Anglican Bishop of Colombo; A.T. Ariyaratne, a Buddhist and founder of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, the country’s largest NGO; and Jesima Ismail, a Muslim women’s activist.
“We must awaken our countrymen to the truth, for the sake of peace,” Franciscan Missionary Sister Rose Fernando told the audience. To open channels of communication and “reawaken people” to the “lies” of the media, “we plan to open a new website and organize interreligious peace dialogue in every place possible,” she said.
Bishop Andradi, in his keynote address, called it unfortunate that people are deprived of the truth. “The root cause is the lack of an independent and impartial source,” he said. According to the prelate, Sri Lankans learn about the war only through news provided by army spokesmen and the media unit of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The LTTE began fighting the Sinhalese-led government in 1983 for an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority is concentrated.
“Transformation of consciousness is possible only by telling the truth to our countrymen,” Sister Fernando, the chief organizer, said on Feb. 24. “Let us create awareness of the socio-political and cultural situation, to bring about a transformation of consciousness.”
“People see false reports all the time,” she told UCA News after the conference. “We are in the process of forming a new website to further collaboration” between credible information sources, she added.
Sri Lanka has suffered from the war for more than two decades, and there is a need to empower people with information, according to Sister Fernando. She described the new website as a necessary first step toward further collaboration among bishops, priests, leaders of various faiths and lay activists to devise ways to mobilize people.
A main aim of the convention, according to the organizers, is to have Church personnel, who work throughout the country, supply news and information for the new website. But they acknowledge the project will not be easy.
“Organizing a new movement among Religious is difficult,” admitted one sister from the contemplative Rosarian community, who asked not to be named. “Taking a more active role as spiritual leaders and peace-builders is a great challenge for us.”
She said extremists have disturbed many protest gatherings and interreligious peace meetings, and religious leaders have been threatened.
Ariyaratne gave an example of how people are currently misinformed. “It is very pathetic that some Buddhist monks who are extremists are fully engaged in promoting war, and not peace,” he told UCA News.
His movement links community development with the philosophy of the late Mahatma Gandhi and general spiritual principles drawn mainly from Hinduism and Buddhism. Sarvodaya also operates Sri Lanka’s largest charity organization, with 15,000 grassroots-level branches staffed by 1,500 people throughout the country.
“Some Buddhist monks mistakenly support the war, and misconstrue the ethnic problem as a terrorist problem,” Ariyaratne complained.
