Activists begin sentences for School of Americas protest - four Catholic nuns among them - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, July 27, 2001 by Patrick O'Neill

Four elderly Catholic nuns were among a group of nine women who voluntarily surrendered at a Pekin, Ill., federal prison July 17 to begin serving six-month sentences stemming from a Nov. 19, 2000, protest at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas training facility in Columbus, Ga.

In May, U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth sentenced the four nuns and 17 others to maximum six-month sentences for trespassing on the base.

The 21 activists will not be eligible for parole and are not expected to be released until next January.

The four nuns include biological sisters, Dorothy Marie Hennessey, who is 88, and Gwen L. Hennessey, 68, both Franciscan nuns. The plight of the pair was recently featured in a New York Times story.

The Army uses the School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, to train foreign militias from throughout the Americas. Opponents have offered proof that some graduates of the school have committed human rights violations and murders after returning to their native lands.

Opposition to the school has been spear-headed by Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, a group that has worked for more than a decade to close the school.

The other nuns sentenced with the Hennessey sisters were: Sr. Elizabeth Anne McKenzie, 71, of Minnesota, a retired teacher with the Sisters of St. Joseph, and Sr. Miriam Spencer, 75, of Washington, a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace.