-Caveat Lector-
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/14/ED119000.DTL
Federal judge makes world safer, sends elderly nuns to jail
Stephanie Salter Thursday, June 14, 2001
IT MIGHT be fine and dandy with some of you that the government of the
United States has thrown the book at an 88-year-old nun and her 68-
year-old kid sister, who is also a nun. Then again, maybe you don't even
know about this.
Last month, in Columbus, Ga., U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth
apparently decided to make the world safe from religious women of
conscience who peacefully trespass on federal property -- specifically,
the military training facility at Fort Benning formerly known as the
School of the Americas:
He sentenced Franciscan nun Dorothy Hennessey, 88, and her younger
sister, Gwen, 68, who is also a Franciscan nun, to six months each in
federal prison -- the maximum possible penalty.
Since 1990, when Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois and a handful of other
protesters showed up at the gates of the school (recently renamed the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), it has been
targeted by tens of thousands of demonstrators. Every October, adults,
students and little kids gather at the entrance to Fort Benning to decry
the school's deadly role in Latin American politics and to demand its
closure.
Some of the protesters -- more each year -- "cross the line" and
trespass onto the grounds. Usually, they carry coffins and name
placards that represent the people who've died at the hands of SOA
graduates.
The Hennessey sisters were among several thousand who crossed the
line last October and got arrested. So were two other nuns from different
orders -- Elizabeth Anne McKenzie from the Sisters of St. Joseph and
Miriam Spencer from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Faircloth
slapped them with the maximum six months in prison, too. McKenzie is
71, Spencer, 75.
Proving that he is an interdenominational kind of guy, Faircloth also sent
a Quaker couple from Ohio -- Bill Houston, 72, and Hazel Tulecke, 77 --
to federal prison. Like the nuns, Houston got the max, but Tulecke
received a break: only three months.
Altogether, 26 peaceful trespassers were sentenced by the judge. Most
(21) got the max, but two got off with a few years probation. One man
from Mississippi, Steve Jacobs, received two 6-month sentences.
Merciful magistrate that he is, Faircloth told Gwen Hennessey that she
didn't have to report to the federal pen at Pekin, Ill. -- the nearest prison
to her order's Dubuque, Iowa, motherhouse -- until after she celebrates
the 50th anniversary of taking her vows.
He also offered the older Dorothy the option of serving her sentence
under "motherhouse arrest" in Dubuque. According to the National
Catholic Reporter, Sister Dorothy told the judge, "No thanks" because
she is not an invalid and wanted to be treated the same as her 25 co-
defendants.
Two of 15 Hennessey siblings, Dorothy and Gwen told the Reporter that
their peaceful civil disobedience was a kind of activist memorial to their
late brother, Franciscan friar Ron Hennessey. He served for 34 years as
a missionary in Latin America and was friends with Salvadoran
Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Romero's 1980 assassination was master-minded by graduates of the
School of the Americas.
Like their fellow convicts, the Hennessey sisters said they weren't
looking forward to jail, but they planned to make the best of it.
Said Dorothy: "If there's time left after we get out we might want to go
into prison ministry."
Just knowing that those two women will be off the street for six months
should really make us all sleep better at night, don't you think?
-
--
Best Wishes
When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get
anarchy. You get the small laws. - G. K. Chesterton, Daily News, 7/29/05
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