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http://www.nevadadesertexperience.org/index.htm Sr. Rosemary Lynch, OSF: 1917-2011 Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Rosemary Lynch, O.S.F. loved the Catholic Franciscan parish she attended as a young person. Motivated by the Franciscans as people and by their religious liturgies and profusion of rituals – and inspired by her brother, Oliver, who left home to attend the Franciscan seminary at the mission in Santa Barbara, California and who subsequently became a friar—Lynch decided to become a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity community in 1932. Her novitiate took place at Stella Niagara Convent in Niagara Falls, New York, where she took final vows in 1934. For the first 26 years of her life as a Franciscan sister, Lynch taught in and administered Catholic schools. She headed the foreign language department, and taught Spanish, at Conaty High School in Los Angeles, a girls Catholic secondary school that catered to students whose parents were unable to send them to the more exclusive and expensive private schools in the city. Then, from 1952 through 1960, she served as principal of Havre Central High School in Havre, Montana near the Canadian border. In 1960, Lynch was sent to Rome by her congregation to attend its general chapter, a periodic gathering of representatives of its communities throughout the world. While there, she was elected as part of the central leadership team of the congregation. She would remain in this post in Rome for fifteen years. Her time in Rome included the four years that the Second Vatican Council was held there, an historic event that thoroughly transformed the church’s attitudes toward itself and the world. Vatican II authorized religious congregations to renew their ways of life in dramatic and even experimental ways. Part of Lynch’s work was to help transform her community’s Rule and Constitution. She thus became conversant with church law. In time she became a resource for other congregations who drew on her expertise as they sought to renew and transfigure their mission and practice of religious life. Her responsibilities also included making visitations to some of her congregation’s provinces around the world, including those in Indonesia, Mexico, and Africa. She recalls now the enormous transformation those journeys wrought in her, especially her time in Africa where she had come face to face with the misery of leprosy and the stark poverty, sharply etched in her mind as she saw, for example, a poor woman with a baby on her back scratching at the ground in search of edible grass. This was profoundly shocking, and after she returned to Rome she could hardly enter a store for fear of screaming out, “I just saw dying children and you are buying false eyelashes!” In California Lynch had witnessed the difficulties faced by her low-income African-American and Mexican-American students, and in Montana she had seen the struggles that the Native American students underwent. These experiences had sensitized her to social inequity. Her exposure to unspeakable misery around the world incalculably deepened her awareness of systemic injustice and violence. This growing conscientization was reinforced by the work of a fellow Franciscan, Sister Klarita, who worked for the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace during those years. Through the work of the commission, Lynch became more aware of specific examples of social-structural injustice and an emerging theology that emphasized the sacredness and dignity of all human persons coupled with systematic social analysis and strategies for social change. After finishing her assignment for her congregation in 1975, she spent an additional year in Rome working with an international education association. All of these experiences led to a profound deepening of Lynch’s personal commitment to nonviolent social change. After returning to the United States in 1977, Lynch settled in Las Vegas where she joined the staff of the Franciscan Center. That summer, President Jimmy Carter announced that he was seeking funding from Congress to develop the “enhanced radiation” or “neutron” bomb. Soon afterward, news was leaked that the neutron bomb had already been developed and tested at the Nevada Test Site. Lynch decided to do some research on this program and the test site in general. In the course of her exploration, she discovered that a group of Quakers, including Larry Scott and Albert Bigelow, had held the last demonstration at the test site on August 6, 1957. Spurred by this, she and a group of friends in Las Vegas organized an event at the gates of NTS to mark the 20th anniversary of this activity, to protest the impending production of the enhanced radiation weapon developed there, and to remember the bombing of Hiroshima thirty-two years earlier. They dubbed themselves “Citizens Concerned about the Neutron Bomb.” As it was later reported: Nineteen people met at the main gate of the NTS before dawn to hold a prayer vigil and conduct a teach in about Hiroshima. The vigilers held signs along the road that led into the Test Site and they were very careful to make signs that supported the workers but objected to testing. One sign read: “NTS Workers Yes, Nuclear Bombs No.” The vigil was highlighted by the visit of Japanese Hibakusha [survivors of the atomic bombings] who wanted to present a book of drawing of the bombs dropped on Japan to the Test Site officials. The vigilers went directly to the guard house at Mercury Station. The Japanese approached the gate house but the guards refused to accept their book. An older Japanese lady, a Hibakusha, extended her hand to the guard and he refused to shake her hand. The small group began a chant, “Take her hand. Take her hand.” Finally the guard gave in and shook her hand. (Michael Affleck, The History and Strategy of the Campaign to End Nuclear Weapons Testing at the Nevada Test Site, 1977-1990 (Las Vegas, NV: Pace e Bene, 1991.) For the next several years, Lynch would visit the test site. At times, she would arrive with a group of friends to mark certain days – the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9), the feast of St. Francis (October 4), or the anniversary of the first test at NTS (January 30). More often she would simply go with her friend, Fred Landau, to the site. They would wander off together or alone into the desert. She would often find a place to sit and pray for hours. She recalls how she “felt for sure some of God’s mysteries of love and forgiveness were opening out to me there.” At the same time, she came to the conviction that “the Bomb was the common enemy of all humankind,” and that working together we could undo this enemy, though she knew that this was ultimately not a question of strictly political change but a deep and profound change of heart. In 1981, the Las Vegas Franciscan Center held a meeting to discuss the call to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis. Louie Vitale, Mike Affleck, and Rosemary Lynch attended the meeting, along with other Franciscan Center staff, including Sr. Julieanne Graf, O.S.F. and Sr. Klarita. Various options were floated, but in the end the decision was made to mark “the year of St. Francis” with a forty day period of prayer and witness at the Nevada Test Site during Lent, 1982 beginning on February 24, Ash Wednesday. The name “Lenten Desert Experience” was chosen. The initial stage of Affleck’s project involved canvassing Franciscans throughout the West to explore what they could do to take steps for peacemaking during “the year of St. Francis.” This involved traveling to all the Franciscan households, parishes and projects in the five states of the province – Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and Nevada – to mull over ways they could do something for peace over the course of the next year. Sr. Rosemary joined Affleck in this effort. In preparation for the 1982 Lenten vigil, Rosemary Lynch made an appointment to meet with General Mahlon Gates, then director of the test site. As Affleck later reported: She expected the meeting to be five minutes and brought him information about the upcoming Lenten vigil. She found him nervous but he relaxed and they spent one and a half hours together. During the visit Gates explained that he was in World War II and had been promoted through the years and he has simply taken one assignment after another and now found himself the director at the Test Site. Sister Rose asked Gates to join the vigil at the Test Site to pray. He said that he cannot but would pray in the office with Sister Rose. They prayed together. …Gates…promised to supply water and port-a-potties for the protesters who would be at the Test Site and in the desert every day during Lent. (Affleck) This initiative to call for a nuclear-free future continues to this day. In 1989, Rosemary co-founded Pace e Bene and co-directed Pace e Bene’s Nurturing a Culture of Nonviolence program with Sr. Mary Litell, OSF, which became the basis of the organization’s Peace Grows curriculum. In 2004 Sr. Rosemary made the decision to move from a formal staff position to becoming Pace e Bene’s first “Pace e Bene Elder,” a role in which she continued to share her keen insights into the spiritual journey of creating a more nonviolent world. Ken Butigan Much of the biographical material in this overview was shared by Sr. Rosemary Lynch, O.S.F. with Ken Butigan during a telephone interview on August 26, 1999 and published in Butigan’s Pilgrimage Through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site (State University of New York Press, 2003). This reflection also draws on Peter Ediger’s appreciation of Sr. Rosemary written in honor of her 90th birthday. Memorial gifts in honor of Sr Rosemary may be made to Franciscan Sisters Social Programs. These gifts will be used to support Sr Klaryta’s refugee ministry, Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, and Nevada Desert Experience. Contributions may be sent to Franciscan Sisters, 6517 Ruby Red Circle, Las Vegas NV 89118. |
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