Nuns at the U.N - nuns who offer valuable information and assistance to the United nations as members of nongovernmental organizations

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 1, 1999 by Arthur Jones

Their impact grows in fresh, gospel-driven ways

When Good Shepherd Sr. Clare Nolan stood before a U.N. panel not long ago, she had something the worldwide organization did not -- up-to-the-minute information from 67 countries, countries where 6,000 Good Shepherd sisters work with girls and young women.

The panel was discussing the plight of girls in the aftermath of the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women. Nolan, part of the Queens, N.Y.-based Good Shepherd Services, is globally connected -- by fax, e-mail and soon Web site -- to a congregation that is on every continent, one founded in France in 1835 specifically to work with at-risk girls, women and families.

When Franciscan Sr. Kathie Uhler attends a U.N. briefing, she can determine the crux issues, notify and, over time, influence almost a million Franciscans worldwide. (In 1990 the Franciscans International nongovernmental organization used the United Nations as a platform to launch a program that has resulted in 3 million trees planted worldwide.)

If the United Nations' topic is Chiapas or Nicaragua or Guatemala, Maryknoll Sr. Mary Duffy can speak from personal experience -- or pick up the telephone to call colleagues working with those sometimes-besieged people for an immediate update.

All these sisters belong to congregations or federations of women religious with NGO -- nongovernmental organization -- status at the United Nations.

What's new at the United Nations this decade is nuns -- and their potential for impact is impressive.

The idea of a Catholic lay presence at the United Nations is far from new. In 1945 in San Francisco, the day the United Nations was born, there were Catholic nongovernmental organizations present, particularly in the person of Catherine Schaeffer, who would open the first Catholic NGO office -- representing the U.S. Catholic bishops (see accompanying story on page 4).

In 1990 there were perhaps two U.N.-accredited women's congregations; today there are more than a dozen. Congregations increasingly "see more clearly" that U.N. accreditation, in the words of Sister of Charity Marie Elena Dio, nongovernmental organization representative for the Elizabeth Seton Federation, "is a way we can have an impact on social justice issues as the world becomes smaller."

Said NGO newcomer, Sister of St. Joseph Carolyn Zinn (the Sisters of St. Joseph have been at the United Nations since 1985), "We're moving from a parochial sense of doing unity and reconciliation and changing systems to a much more global sense."

There are about 3,500 nongovernmental organizations accredited in two ways (with some overlap): to either the Department of Public Information, noted mainly for its comprehensive Thursday briefings, or to the Economic and Social Committee, which allows NGOs to submit papers to U.N. committees and panels.

Nongovernmental organizations buzz like bees from a ring of hives that circle the queen bee United Nations. They're not necessarily a harmonious swarm -- environmental, humanitarian and pacifist-focused NGOs are known in some circles as "greens," anti-environmentalists as "grays" and quasi-corporate NGOs, like the nuclear power industry or the National Rifle Association, as "suits."

The acronym-filled United Nations, the arcane bureaucracy of popular legend, while living up to its reputation for cumbersomeness, also generates an inordinate number of initiatives that attempt to pressure even the largest nations to act on behalf of the common good.

Nongovernmental organizations, cooperating with others on mutual concerns, not only enable the United Nations to exert that influence, the NGOs instigate much of it. It was NGOs, not the United Nations itself, that in practical terms set the agendas for the U.N. conferences in Beijing; Cairo, Egypt; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on topics ranging from women to global warming to banning land mines.

The NGOs function at major U.N. conferences by running parallel NGO activities. In Beijing, NGOs held a parallel conference. More often they function by holding panels, talks and workshops for persons attending the conferences, work that feeds into the discussions by government delegations to the United Nations.

As more and more organizations of women and men religious apply for NGO status with the United Nations, they bring the world to the U.N. doorstep in fresh, gospel-and spirituality-driven ways.

Simultaneously, Catholic religious congregation NGOs are learning how to transmit U.N.-identified world needs and programs back to their congregations, parishes, schools, colleges, lay associates and the local media.

Four years ago the Franciscans were the movers behind establishing the NGO Values Caucus. The caucus is a regular gathering that inserts ethical questions into the NGO debates behind every U.N. proposal. "When I first came [in 1993]," said Franciscan International NGO co-chair Sr. Kathie Uhler, "words like values, ethics, spirituality and religion were almost taboo. In just five short years, the U.N. has opened itself up to considerations of values, of global ethics, spirituality -- words that are even in the documents now."