{"id":5910,"date":"2025-01-31T12:15:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T11:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/generalat-hsosf.de\/?p=5910"},"modified":"2025-03-03T16:00:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T15:00:44","slug":"pilgrims-of-hope-1-reconciliation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generalat-hsosf.de\/en\/pilgrims-of-hope-1-reconciliation\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilgrims of Hope (1): Reconciliation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Pilgrims of Hope (1): Reconciliation<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The series \u201cPilgrims of Hope\u201d is a monthly spiritual contribution to the Holy Year – a collaboration between the international Generalate of the Hospital Sisters of St Francis and the Muenster-based German church publication \u201cKirche und Leben\u201d (\u201cChurch+Life\u201d). Our topic in January: Hope for Reconciliation.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holy Year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War \u2013 a war that started in Germany and brought incredible suffering to the world. This year, we commemorate, among other events, the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945, and the dropping of the American atomic bombs on Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz, about a million of them Jews. In Hiroshima alone, about 80,000 people died immediately after the bomb exploded 80 years ago; in Nagasaki, the death toll was 22,000. More than 200,000 civilians in Japan succumbed to the long-term effects of radiation within the following months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while we are still trying to come to terms with the consequences of a war that took place decades ago, the current wars in the world claim new victims every day, create new hatred and fuel the call for revenge in many places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How can we keep the hope of reconciliation alive in this global madness?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To answer this question, we would like to share two examples from our international congregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sister M. Jacintha Altenburg, who now lives in the motherhouse of our German Province in Muenster, was born in 1939 in a small Catholic village in Friesland in the Netherlands and spent the first years of her life under German occupation, \u201cOf course, our parents tried to protect us children,\u201d says Sister Jacintha. So she didn’t know at the time that her father played an important role in the resistance against the Germans. He survived, but one of Sister Jacintha’s uncles was among the many victims of the occupation: he was shot by the Germans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, and against the will of some of her family members, the Dutchwoman decided after the war to join our Congregation, although it came from Germany, the country of the hated occupiers. At first she worked as a nurse in the Netherlands, then she helped to build the hospital in Kamp-Lintfort that was founded by our Sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when we founded a convent at the former concentration camp in Esterwegen in 2007, in order to participate in the design of the memorial site, Sister Jacintha was one of the first Sisters to go there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Hell in the Moors” – a book on the former Concentration Camp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Our Convent at the Esterwegen Memorial Site<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Sister M. Jacintha practising meditation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many resistance fighters from the Netherlands, Belgium and France were among the people who were interned, tortured and killed in Esterwegen. Sister Jacintha helped them and their families to come to terms with the inconceivable, and in doing so she repeatedly reached her own limits. \u201cSome of my family and frieds at home did not understand how I could live and work in a place created by the perpetrators”, Sister Jacintha says. “One of my brothers did not speak to me again \u2013 not until he was on his deathbed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founding of our community’s Japanese Province was also overshadowed by the Second World War. In 1948, two of our Hospital Sisters from the American Province arrived in Nagasaki and took over St. Francis Hospital, which had been founded in 1922 and destroyed by the atomic bombing of their fellow countrymen. As early as 1951, the first Sisters of Japanes nationality entered our Congregation as novices. Even today, there are four Sisters from Nagasaki in the motherhouse of the Japanese province in Himeji who experienced the bombing themselves, and who survived it. One of them is Sister M. Veronica, born in 1932.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sister M. Veronica was born in 1932 and survived the Nagasaki atomic bomb.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When asked today whether she felt hatred for the Americans, she says no. And she explains, just like Sister Jacintha in faraway Germany:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If we cannot manage reconciliation, then who can?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So this is what we have learned from the impressive life stories of our international sisters: No matter how many wars are waged between countries and nations, there is always hope for reconciliation between us as people. Here and now, tomorrow and everywhere, for each and every one of us. If we make the first step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Sister M. Margarete Ulager and Claudia Berghorn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was published online in “Kirche+Leben” <\/a>on January 27, 2025, and in the printed paper on January 30 – which made Sister M. Jacintha very happy and proud!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sister Jacintha on the front page of “Kirche+Leben”…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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… and with Sister M. Veronica on page 17!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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