“FROM SLIGO TO EL SALVADOR […]” IAHM Heritage Lecture and Panel Discussion

The Irish American Heritage Museum is honored to host the lecture and panel discussion, "FROM SLIGO TO EL SALVADOR:The Irish Roots and Passion For Justice of Sr. Maura Clarke, MM." This presentation will be an intimate view into Sr. Maura's life, work and legacy. Discussing Sister Maura’s remarkable journey is author Eileen Markey (A Radical Faith: The Assasination of Sr. Maura) and Sr. Maura's family members Deirdre Keogh-Anderson and IAHM's Executive Director Michael C. Clarke.

Background: On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of Sr. Maura Clarke and three other American women were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. The four churchwomen had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background.

Sr. Maura was raised in a tight-knit Irish immigrant community in Queens (New York) during World War II. Maura's parents, John (Carrowmorris, Co. Sligo) and Mary (née McCloskey, from Ballymoney, Co. Antrim) emigrated to New York in the early 1900s , and settled in Rockaway NY, where they raised their three children. Maura - their eldest - became a Maryknoll missionary as a means to a life outside her small, orderly world. Maura's journey is breathtaking, considering her Irish heritage and the remarkable impact of her faith and family. We will learn of Sr. Maura's path: from an active and popular teen in Queens NY to an organizer in the 1970s, marching for liberation alongside the poor of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Sr. Maura's story offers a window into the powerful impact of many influences, including: Sr. Maura's Irish-American upbringing; the role her Irish heritage played in the formation of Sr. Maura's outlook and efforts; Sr. Maura's remarkable faith; and, the evolution of postwar Catholicism, from an inward-looking, protective institution in the 1950s to a community of people grappling with what it meant to live with purpose in a shockingly violent world. This IAHM presentation will provide an intimate portrait of Maura's background; her genuine, kind soul; her impact upon others here in the US and in Central America; and, to Maura's spiritual and political transformation into an "influencer" decades after her courageous death due to her devotion to her faith and to justice.

Presenters: Author Eileen Markey, in A Radical Faith: The Assasination of Sr. Maura, brilliantly breathed life back into Sr. Maura, decades after Sr. Maura was killed. Who was this woman in the dirt? What led her to this vicious death so far from home? Sr. Maura's niece Deirdre Keogh-Anderson and cousin Michael Cornelius Clarke will offer intimate, personal details about Maura's family, story and impact.