Chris Keavney

Maryknoll Lay Missioners is a Catholic mission-sending community committed to nonviolence through prevention, intervention, reconciliation and the restoration of all creation. Compelled by faith to engage with people across cultures and ethnicities, we live, love and work with communities on the margins to promote active nonviolence and healing. We are long-term missioners and missioner families, serving in nine African, Asian and American countries. Striving to create an inclusive and anti-racist world, we live and work with those most excluded in society to transform unjust structures together. Jesus’ call to love our neighbors as ourselves extends throughout our interconnected world. And Pope Francis’ call to “go to the margins” means embracing the Gospel’s preferential option for the poor throughout our global “neighborhood.” For half a century, Maryknoll Lay Missioners has sent almost 1,000 men, women and families to serve in 34 countries. Thousands more have walked with us by lending their financial, moral and prayerful support. Being missioners today is different from the missionary models of previous centuries. Today our missioners work with local partners, building their capacity to provide for their own communities and to work for more just and compassionate societies. We foster greater global solidarity by accompanying people from different cultures, races, languages and religions. Listening to each other’s realities, we build relationships of mutual friendship and respect to help heal today’s fractured world. Maryknoll lay missioners • commit to and practice our core values of simple living, community, joy, inclusion and humility. • include single women and men, married couples and families with children. • range from young people in their 20s to those who have joined after retirement. • serve in Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Haiti, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, Cambodia and at the U.S.-Mexico border. • work in education, healthcare, justice and pe