Sister Sponsa Anxiously Awaits Return To Liberia

By CAROL ZIMMERMANN, CNS

Published: August 21, 2003

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Bernardine Franciscan Sister Sponsa Beltran keeps constantly up-to-date on the current situation in Liberia.

And as the conflict in the West African nation has intensified this summer, she has become more and more ill at ease, primarily because she wants to be there and has been unable to get a flight into the war-torn region.

"It's a sad plight. I don't know why I'm here," she told Catholic News Service in an Aug. 8 interview while she was staying with other sisters from her order in the Scranton, Pa., Diocese said. "If I had known it would be so intense, I never would have left."

The 78-year-old legally blind nun, who has spent time in the Archdiocese of Atlanta frequently over the years to fund raise and visit her family, has been in the United States for the past few months visiting parishes. She is trying to raise funds for Our Lady of Fatima Rehabilitation Village in Monrovia, a home she founded 14 years ago for physically disabled children. The Beltran family also includes Archbishop Eusebius Beltran of Oklahoma City and the late Father Joe Beltran, both priests of the Atlanta Archdiocese.

A nurse, Sister Sponsa first went to Liberia in 1970, staying for seven years until an eye ailment forced her to leave. She returned in 1986 and has been there ever since, except when fund-raising trips or the violence in Liberia forced her to leave temporarily.

She told CNS in August she is afraid that her fund-raising efforts will not be able to go to special building projects, but will simply be used to buy food for the children.

According to a UNICEF report, eight out of 10 children in Liberia below the age of 5 were malnourished before the current round of fighting. And 14 years of civil war and government problems have left the country without a water system or working sewers.

Sister Sponsa told CNS she had spoken to Catholic Relief Services officials and they were unable to get food to the region. Relief agencies were optimistic that after U.S. Marines and Nigerian peacekeeping troops reached Liberia's main seaport, food and aid could once again be delivered, depending on what remained of the food stored at the port, since looters have been taking away food during the last few weeks.

"They are down to their last bit of food," Sister Sponsa said of the children in her rehabilitation center. She also pointed out that during the intense fighting the children were unable to leave the center and look for food.

During the recent fighting, rebel forces have occasionally come to the center's gate but have never harmed the children, which she attributes to prayer.

"The children pray a lot," she said. "I hope they don't lose faith."

Charles Taylor, Liberia's president for the past six years, resigned Aug. 11 and fled the country. In the days before he left, Sister Sponsa was not optimistic that the country would be able to turn itself right around, but hoped that the next leader would be "someone who loves the people and is not in it for themselves."

For her part, Sister Sponsa said she will always remain dedicated to helping the children of Liberia, where she was sent decades ago as a missionary sister to work in a clinic in Monrovia. She began a ministry to help the handicapped when she realized she never saw any children with disabilities at the clinic because these children were ostracized by their own families and were hiding.

"These children might not be able to work on the farms," she said, "yet they can do many things."