Society of Mary

Marist Fathers New Zealand: Life and spirit

Marist Spirituality

Helping for Hope: School student’s anti-trafficking initiative

Helping for Hope is Bridgette’s initiative to raise awareness about human trafficking.

Bridgette, a student at the Classical Academy in Escondido, California started the anti-trafficking club in her school.

Since 2005 the Marist Missionary Sisters have provided a transitional home in southern California for women escaping from human trafficking, and Helping for Hope is committed to assisting Mary’s Guest House raise awareness.

Helping for Hope
Bridgette (middle) with current staff of Mary’s Guest House; Srs Judy (left) and Joan.

To date, Helping for Hope initiatives include a pizza evening with games and an impassioned presentation from Kathy Hardy, a former sex slave of 20 years.

Other initiatives include a T-shirt designed to promote the end of sex slavery and the school’s art department having a project where students created an artistic work on trafficking.

“The most inspirational part was to see these young people becoming ambassadors for other young people to help them be aware of protecting themselves and helping others”, wrote Sr Judy Sheridan on the Marist Missionary Sisters website.

Another Marist Missionary Sister, John Paul Chao is working to stem the tide of human trafficking in San Francisco.

“Most people I meet say they have seen a program on TV or read an article in the newspaper about it, but they don’t realize how rampant it is”, she says in an interview on the Society of Mary USA website.

“According to a U.S. State Department estimate, human trafficking is a $32 billion dollar per year business worldwide.

“That’s a larger business profit than those of Google, Nike and Starbucks combined”.

“The most common forms of human trafficking include: sexual exploitation of women and girls (79%); forced labor, male and female (18%); for the purpose of selling organs (0.2%); forced marriage; forced soldiers; and baby-selling.

“Sexual exploitation of women and girls is most common because the profit is much greater than the other forms,” Sr John Paul Chao said.

Sr John Paul Chao’s comments are reinforced by a 2015 study by the University of San Diego and Point Loma Nazarene University revealing sex trafficking is the second largest underground economy, in San Diego.

The universities’ study estimate that in San Diego alone sex trafficking is valued annually as an US$810m industry; mostly run by gangs.

The study found 80% of victims are domestically trafficked while 20% were foreign born.

Praying for Marist Vocations

In preparation for the Feast of St Peter Chanel, it is a tradition in the Society of Mary to pray through his intercession for vocations to the Society.

You’re invited to join with Marists as we focus our prayer during these nine days for vocations to the Society.

This year the feast of St Peter Chanel, April 28, occurred during Easter Week and meant the novena clashed with Holy Week and Easter. The 2011 novena will begin on the 6th of May and finish on Saturday the 14th ‒ the vigil of Vocations Sunday.

Let’s together pray together to the “Lord of the harvest” to send workers into his harvest.

The booklet Nine days of prayer for vocations to the Society of Mary may help.

Jeanne-Marie Chavoin

Jeanne-Marie Chavoin

Theodore Chavoin was 20 when he married 19-year-old Jeanne Vercheres on May 31, 1786.

Barely three months later, their first child, Jeanne-Marie, was born.

Two more children were born into the family: Marie, who lived only a year, and Claudine-Marie, who married Jacques Millot, a local weaver.

A country girl, Jeanne-Marie grew up with little formal education (her spelling was never quite accurate), but with a great deal of common sense and good judgement.

The Chavoin family was closely-knit, and Jeanne-Marie’s childhood was secure and tranquil, even though these were the times of the French Revolution. By temperament she was an extrovert, for whom action was second nature. Being the daughter of the respected village tailor, and used to meeting people in her father’s shop, she developed an open, friendly and outgoing attitude to people.

Continue reading about: Jeanne-Marie Chavoin

Marcellin Champagnat

Marcellin Champagnat

Marcellin Champagnat was the first of the founding people to succeed in forming a Marist group, and his company of Marist Brothers became the fastest growing and the most numerous of the branches of the Marist project.

This in itself explains a great deal about this most loveable of characters who did so much for the enterprise in his short life.

From beginning to end, Marcellin was a practical person, and everything about him reflects this: the way he understood the ideas exchanged at the seminary, the way he responded to needs, the way he formed his Brothers.

Much of this can be traced to his background. His mother was a woman of strong and robust faith, who more than once accompanied Marcellin on foot to the shrine of St Francis Regis at La Louvesc, when difficulties threatened his seminary studies.

Continue reading about: Marcellin Champagnat