(Ucan News) Carmelite Father Peter Hinde and Mercy Sister Betty Campbell often share an anecdote when receiving foreign visitors at Casa Tabor, the home in a modest Ciudad Juarez neighborhood near the US border where they’ve lived, worked and welcomed visitors for 25 years.
“Tabor House did a lot of hospitality for the poor,” said Sister Erickson, “but it was also what they called ‘contemplative political action.’ They wanted to understand what was happening to people, forcing migration.”
The pair worked quietly in Ciudad Juarez, not seeking the spotlight, but actively bearing witness to the difficulties of life in the borderlands: the murders of women, migrants perishing in attempts to reach the US, low wages and poor working conditions in the factory-for-export economy and drug cartel violence.
Father Hinde and Sister Campbell will receive the CRISPAZ Peace Award Nov. 17 for their decades of ministry and social justice work in Latin America.
An ecumenical organization, CRISPAZ, or Christians for Peace in El Salvador, was co-founded by Father Hinde and two colleagues in 1985 during the Salvadoran civil war. Human rights abuses by the Salvadoran army were rife, and CRISPAZ volunteers provided a presence in the country in an effort to prevent atrocities from occurring.
Tej Francis
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