Sister Anne Montgomery, Plowshares leader against nuclear weapons, dies

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3. Anne Montgomery, rscj: Peace is her passion

http://www.rscj.org/node/228

Anne Montgomery, rscj: Peace is her passion

Sister Anne Montgomery’s quest for nonviolent solutions to the world’s problems has led to her “ministry of presence” in the West Bank.


Anne comforting a Palestinian girl as she watches her family's orchard being destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, August or Sept. 1998.

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It was April 23, 2002. Sr. Anne Montgomery RSCJ was hunkered down with other Christian Peacemakers in an apartment in Bethlehem during the standoff at the Church of the Nativity, where some 200 armed Palestinians had taken refuge against advancing Israeli troops.

The 75-year-old nun’s passion for peace had taken her again to the Middle East, where she’s spent a good part of her life for the past seven years. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the Brooklyn-based Montgomery spends most of her overseas months, her ministry has been one of presence, serving as an international observer in the interest of justice and peace.

“The situation in the church is desperate,” Montgomery said in a telephone interview from her apartment. It was close enough to the church that the group could hear periodic gunfire as well as a distracting low hum emanating from speakers that Israelis had positioned over the church. The speakers had been hoisted up on cranes that hovered threateningly overhead.

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Montgomery works with the Chicago-based Christian Peacemakers Teams, an outreach of congregations of Mennonites, Quakers and Church of the Brethren aimed at reducing violence around the world. According to Claire Evans, a peacemaker who works in the Chicago office coordinating delegations, teams of volunteers are dispatched to areas of conflict around the world.

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Her peacemaking ministry has led Montgomery to other war-torn regions. She went to the Balkans during the war there in the 1990s. She has engaged in many demonstrations aimed at ending violence in its various forms.

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