A good photo captures the universality of a situation that goes way beyond its particular subject. For me, that’s the case with the image of the little girl on our cover this issue. Before reading further, please take a look at her.
Where is she from? What is that sadness and wariness in her lovely face? Is she a refugee from Syria? A displaced child in Afghanistan? The daughter of undocumented laborers fearful her parents will be deported? She’s none of these, yet she shares similar deprivation and uncertainty.
Living in a shack perched on a steep and rocky hillside in Lima, Peru, she is the beneficiary of a program to help at-risk families, part of the ministry of Maryknoll Father Joseph Fedora. Because of that assistance in the form of social workers who check on the family’s health and general wellbeing, she and her family are not alone. People such as Father Fedora and you, our Maryknoll readers, care.
That’s why our cover line for this year-end issue is Making a World of Difference. That’s what people featured in this issue do, like the people in Pelham, N.Y., who, with assistance from a group of Maryknoll priests and brothers, resettled a Syrian refugee family; or like Merwyn and Kirstin De Mello, who spent the last three years in Afghanistan working on peacebuilding; or like Maryknoll Sister Ngoc-Hà Pham, who strives to improve life for mentally and physically disabled people in China. That’s what we’re all called to do: make a difference.
