True Love, Serving The Poor....

A few years back I had a chance to sit down with my Head Instructor and I asked him about some of the things that he would never forget during his travels globally when he was a young Analyst. I thought that he would say something about his close calls out in the field and was very surprised when he hollered out loudly the name, "Irene McCormack."

Irene was born in Western Australia in 1938. As a young woman she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph, an order of Catholic Nuns. Feeling an urgency to be of greater service to Christ and to the poor, in 1987 she volunteered for an assignment in Peru. She was no longer a young woman. She was sent to a mountain village in the tops of the Andes. The name of the village was Huasahuasi. In 1987, the village had no electricity, no telephone, no doctor, no potable water and no police station. It had a small Catholic Church, but no Priest. A Priest from another distant modern area would visit the village once a month to hear confessions and administer the sacrament.

Sister Irene was running an orphanage in Huasahuasi and met my instructor in 1989 during his trip to Peru, as part of his duties as an Analyst for that part of the world. Sister Irene was able to convince my instructor to use his connections to bring in goods and supplies for the orphanage. During that time, Peru was going through some internal political conflict and a certain group of extremists were threatening to seize political power. When this group of extremists found out that the orphanage was receiving food and supplies, they immediately threatened Sister Irene, making up idiotic stories that the food has been poison to make the children sterile. Isn't it interesting that absurd silly stories (common tactics used by extremists all over the world) can be used to instill FEAR in people? Sister Irene didn't get swayed by the FEAR TACTICS, of the extremists and kept feeding the children.

Despite the threats to her life, Sister Irene never said anything about them to my instructor and acted like all was well, doing her service for the poor with a big loving smile on her face. My instructor told me that the day he received word that Sister Irene had been killed by the extremists, it was and will always be one of the saddest day of his life. True Love, Serving The Poor. I will always take off my hat and bow with my hands over my heart to show love and respect for people like Sister Irene McCormack. Thank you Sister Irene.