IN THE NEWS: Fr. Roy Bourgeois to Speak at CGU

This week on November 1st and 2nd Fr. Roy Bourgeois will be at Claremont Graduate University to offer discussions on the topics of women’s ordination and the School of Americas Watch.

Fr. Roy is a Maryknoll priest, social justice activist, and founder of the School of Americas Watch. Here on FAR we have had many discussions and posts about women’s ordination. However we have had far less about the destruction caused by the School of Americas (SOA) now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Renamed in 2001, this institution is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers located in Fort Benning, Georgia and has been dubbed “School of Assassins.” Since 1946 it has trained over 64,000 soldiers in various military techniques including psychological warfare and interrogation tactics. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, and massacred. This death toll includes the assassination of US Churchwomen (3 US nuns and one lay woman) Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel; Archbishop Oscar Romero, Jesuit priests Ignacio Ellacuria, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno, and Amado Lopez; and their housekeeper, Elba Ramos, and her daughter Celia Marisela Ramos. Each year, SOA Watch has a vigil in Fort Benning calling for the closing of this “School of Assassins” and this year it will be held November 14-18.

You can hear Fr. Roy talk about this social injustice on November 2, 2012 from 1-3pm at Claremont Graduate University. You can also attend Fr. Roy’s discussion about women’s ordination in the Catholic Church on November 1, 2012 from 7-9pm which will be proceeded by a panel discussion that includes FAR contributors Rosemary Radford Ruether and Gina Messina-Dysert as well as Roman Catholic Woman Priest, Jane Via. This event is free and open to the public.