by Dionel Rodriguez | Mar 5, 2025
For nearly three decades, individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS in São Paulo have turned to Maryknoll for compassionate, consistent support through the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual challenges that accompany a serious, chronic illness. The ministry’s longevity reflects both the ongoing need in the community and the trust it has built over many years of dedicated service.
Through home visits, hospital visits, individual and group counseling, educational programs, advocacy, and referrals to additional services, this ministry addresses the full range of needs that individuals facing HIV/AIDS commonly experience, recognizing that medical treatment alone rarely addresses the isolation, stigma, and emotional strain that often accompany the diagnosis.
Nearly three decades of continuous presence in São Paulo embody the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Solidarity, a sustained commitment that has outlasted the shifting attention many institutions have given to the HIV/AIDS crisis over the years. This ministry reflects Maryknoll’s founding charism of long-term accompaniment, choosing to remain rooted in a community’s struggle rather than moving on once initial urgency has faded from public awareness.
Gifts to this project support home visits, counseling, and advocacy that help restore dignity and offer hope to individuals and families in São Paulo facing the challenges of HIV/AIDS.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Mar 5, 2025
Deep within the Bolivian Amazon, many Catholic communities are separated by vast distances and challenging travel conditions, including rivers that can only be crossed by boat and roads that become impassable during the rainy season. These geographic realities mean that regular access to priests, sacraments, and organized parish life is far from guaranteed for many residents.
Maryknoll serves these communities directly through the parish ministry in Santísima Trinidad, bringing sacraments, faith formation, pastoral care, and community support to people who would otherwise have limited access to the institutional Church. Given the difficulty of travel, missionaries serving this parish often plan extended visits to outlying communities to make the most of each journey.
Serving remote Amazonian communities embodies the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Care for God’s Creation, recognizing that the wellbeing of these families is inseparable from the health of the rainforest surrounding them. This ministry also reflects Maryknoll’s founding charism of going to the peripheries, sustaining a committed presence in places that geography alone renders difficult for the institutional Church to reach on any regular basis.
Gifts to this project support pastoral outreach, sacramental ministry, and sustainable development efforts that keep remote Amazonian communities connected to their faith, to the Church, and to one another.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Feb 14, 2024
For many immigrants arriving in Chile from across Latin America and the Caribbean, the journey does not end once they cross the border. Newcomers frequently face unfamiliar legal systems, language barriers, employment discrimination, and the general uncertainty that comes with starting over in a new country, often without the support networks that longtime residents can rely on.
Maryknoll helps immigrants and refugees navigate these challenges through the Office for Immigrants in the Diocese of Talca, providing assistance with immigration documentation, legal processes, employment concerns, and access to essential public and social services. The office serves individuals and families from across the region, reflecting the diverse origins of migrants currently arriving in Chile.
This ministry embodies the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Rights and Responsibilities as they apply to migrants, affirming the Church’s long-standing teaching that the right to migrate in search of a better life carries with it a corresponding claim to dignity and just treatment. It also reflects Maryknoll’s founding charism of welcoming the stranger, offering newcomers to Chile not just practical assistance but a genuine sense of belonging within the Church.
Gifts to this project support legal assistance, documentation help, and social service referrals that help immigrants and refugees in the Diocese of Talca build stable lives and become active members of their new communities.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Feb 8, 2022
In the highlands of southern Peru, indigenous communities often face significant threats to their ancestral land, water sources, and traditional livelihoods, frequently linked to extractive industries and development projects undertaken with limited consultation or regard for local rights. These pressures place both cultural survival and environmental sustainability at risk simultaneously.
Through partnerships with local organizations, Maryknoll supports leadership training, legal advocacy, environmental stewardship, and community education initiatives designed to help these communities protect their interests. Grounded explicitly in Catholic social teaching regarding human dignity and care for creation, this ministry treats environmental protection and human rights as two dimensions of a single, interconnected concern rather than separate issues.
This ministry directly embodies two closely linked Catholic Social Teaching principles: Care for God’s Creation and the Rights and Responsibilities owed to indigenous communities whose land, water, and culture are too often disregarded by outside interests. It reflects Maryknoll’s prophetic charism of standing publicly with those defending their rightful place on the land, treating environmental protection and human dignity as a single, unified cause.
Gifts to this project support leadership training, legal advocacy, and environmental education that empower indigenous communities in southern Peru to protect their rights, preserve their culture, and safeguard the natural resources they depend on.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Feb 8, 2022
Families across Bolivia face a range of emotional, psychological, and spiritual challenges, from the strains of poverty to the effects of family separation and other significant life stressors. In many communities, professional mental health resources are scarce, and the stigma sometimes associated with seeking psychological help can further discourage individuals and families from pursuing needed support.
Maryknoll provides pastoral counseling and spiritual accompaniment to individuals, couples, children, and families navigating these difficulties. Working alongside professional counselors and psychologists, the ministry offers structured counseling services alongside complementary supports, including literacy programs, after-school assistance for children, home visits for families unable to travel, and broader outreach to vulnerable populations.
This ministry reflects the Catholic Social Teaching principle of the Life and Dignity of the Human Person, affirming that emotional and psychological wellbeing matter as much as physical health to a life lived in dignity, alongside the Call to Family, which holds up the household as the foundational unit of society. It also embodies Maryknoll’s charism of accompaniment, offering steady, compassionate presence to individuals and families navigating difficulties too often carried in silence.
Gifts to this project support pastoral counseling, literacy programs, and family outreach that help individuals and families find healing, strengthen relationships, and navigate difficult circumstances with renewed hope.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Feb 8, 2022
Inspired by Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’ to care for our common home, communities throughout Latin America face mounting environmental and social challenges that call for a response rooted in both faith and practical action. From deforestation to climate-related agricultural disruption, environmental degradation increasingly intersects with issues of poverty and social justice across the region.
Maryknoll supports missionary formation, environmental stewardship, and faith-based leadership initiatives designed to help address these interconnected challenges. Through workshops, retreats, and educational programs, participants are encouraged to integrate faith, social justice, and care for creation into their daily lives and ministries, rather than treating environmental concern as separate from spiritual or pastoral work.
Directly named for Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical, this project embodies the Catholic Social Teaching principle of Care for God’s Creation, forming missionaries and lay leaders across Latin America to see environmental protection as inseparable from social justice. It also reflects Maryknoll’s charism of prophetic witness, preparing a new generation to carry Laudato Si’s call for ecological conversion into the concrete life of parishes and communities.
Gifts to this project support missionary formation, reforestation, and leadership development that form disciples across Latin America committed to protecting the environment and building a more just, sustainable future for their communities.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Oct 9, 2020
oung women escaping abuse, trafficking, abandonment, or extreme poverty in Peru often have nowhere safe to turn, particularly when family relationships have broken down or become dangerous. Without a secure place to stay, many face an impossible choice between remaining in harmful circumstances or facing the risks of homelessness, including further exploitation.
La Posadita del Buen Pastor provides shelter, meals, guidance, and support to vulnerable young women seeking a genuine fresh start. Residents receive not only basic physical necessities but also counseling and structured opportunities to begin rebuilding their lives in a safe, nurturing environment, one designed specifically around the needs of young women who have experienced trauma or exploitation.
Sheltering young women fleeing abuse and exploitation embodies the Catholic Social Teaching principle of the Life and Dignity of the Human Person, affirming that no woman’s worth is diminished by what has been done to her. The shelter’s name, invoking the Good Shepherd, reflects Maryknoll’s charism of seeking out those most at risk of being lost, offering not just refuge but the sustained guidance needed to build a genuinely new life.
Gifts to this project provide shelter, meals, counseling, and guidance that offer vulnerable young women in Peru safety, healing, and a genuine pathway toward independence.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Jun 11, 2020
In Cochabamba, many children struggle academically due to a combination of poverty, family migration, and limited educational support available at home. Parents working long hours to support their families, or navigating the disruptions of relocating for work, often have little time or capacity to help their children with schoolwork, leaving academic gaps to widen over time.
Maryknoll addresses this challenge by providing after-school tutoring, mentoring, and a safe, structured environment where children can focus on learning outside the pressures and distractions they may face at home. The program specifically serves students from low-income families, offering academic support that helps improve performance in core subjects while also fostering personal confidence and social development.
This project embodies the Catholic Social Teaching principles of Rights and Responsibilities, particularly a child’s right to education, and the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, addressing the academic gaps that poverty and family instability so often create. It also reflects Maryknoll’s charism of practical accompaniment, meeting children exactly where their need is most acute, in the after-school hours when a lack of support can quietly widen into a lasting disadvantage.
Gifts to this project provide after-school tutoring and mentoring that help children in Cochabamba overcome academic challenges linked to poverty and family instability, building the skills and confidence they need to succeed in school.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Jun 10, 2020
Trauma affects millions of people across Brazil and around the world, leaving emotional and spiritual wounds that often remain invisible to those around them, even as they profoundly shape a person’s daily life, relationships, and sense of safety. Violence, loss, abuse, and broader social hardship can all contribute to trauma that, left unaddressed, tends to compound over time.
Maryknoll supports counseling, workshops, and professional training programs designed to help individuals and communities recover from trauma stemming from these varied causes. Training programs in particular extend the ministry’s reach by equipping local counselors, community leaders, and pastoral workers with skills to recognize and respond to trauma within their own communities, multiplying the impact of the initial training investment.
This ministry reflects the Catholic Social Teaching principle of the Life and Dignity of the Human Person, affirming that healing from violence and loss is essential to a life lived in dignity, not a private matter to be endured alone. It also carries forward Maryknoll’s charism of accompaniment through suffering, integrating psychological care with spiritual support so that recovery addresses both the mind and the deeper wounds of the spirit.
Gifts to this project support counseling, workshops, and professional training that help individuals and communities in Brazil recover from trauma and rebuild lives marked by resilience and hope.
by Dionel Rodriguez | Jun 10, 2020
Located in Curicó, Chile, Cristo Resucitado Parish serves a vibrant community facing significant economic hardship, migration-related challenges, and broader social needs. Despite these pressures, the parish remains a vital source of both spiritual life and practical support for thousands of people in the surrounding area.
Working with limited resources, the parish offers faith formation programs, youth activities, educational assistance for families struggling to cover school-related costs, targeted support for immigrants navigating their new life in Chile, and monthly food distributions for families facing food insecurity. This combination of spiritual and material support reflects the parish’s broader role as a comprehensive community resource, not simply a place of worship.
Combining faith formation, food assistance, and support for immigrant families reflects the Catholic Social Teaching principle of the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, meeting the needs of the whole person rather than the spiritual or material alone. This parish also embodies Maryknoll’s charism of integral mission, understanding evangelization, and direct service to the poor as two expressions of a single Gospel commitment.
Gifts to this project support food distributions, educational assistance, and outreach to immigrant families that help Cristo Resucitado Parish serve as both a spiritual home and a source of practical support for the Curicó community.
