Dear Friends of CARITAS,

This month we celebrate 100 years of life-changing caritas love and the 50th anniversary of the passing of a great missionary.

Fifty years ago, Mother Mary Kevin Kearny, OSF, a loving provider to thousands of needy children, a spiritual leader to hundreds of sisters, a caregiver to lepers, a helper to impoverished women, and an advocate for mercy and justice, died peacefully in her sleep. She left a century long legacy of hope and service to Africa and an eternal imprint on the Kingdom.

Arriving in Uganda in 1903, she helped transform the lives of tens of thousands over the span of a 50 year ministry.  Her work includes founding the Little Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi in 1923. Over 700 Sisters now work in combined communities of the Little Sisters throughout Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. We are so very proud of the work these sisters have accomplished continuing to live the spirit of love and care witnessed in their foundress, Mother Kevin. CARITAS For Children is honored to work with these sisters in partnership to in their life-changing work through child sponsorship programs in Africa.

Through Mother Kevin, new convents, schools, medical clinics and women’s development groups were opened throughout Africa. Centers were opened in Uganda to care for victims of Leprosy. An outdoor clinic that began under a mango tree near Kampala, Uganda in 1903 later became a hospital and a training school for nurses.  Later still a Secondary School, a Teacher Training College and a Home craft Vocational Center were all added to further enhance the services of these missionary women.

Mother Kevin passed the primary leadership role of her work to younger Sisters in 1954, but continued the work of soliciting funds and support for Africa until her death. Tirelessly she traveled, talked, prayed and inspired, always hoping to return one day to her beloved Uganda.

Quietly, at the end of a busy day October 16th, 1957, Mother Kevin died in her sleep. Her Sisters and friends on three continents dearly missed her.  She did receive her final heart’s wish, and returned to Uganda to be buried alongside the many sisters that died before her there..

Sisters working in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa labor on in the spirit of Mother Kevin today in ever growing numbers.

There are thousands of very poor children still in this rural area of Uganda in need of education, food, clothing and hopeless without the support of sponsors to provide the financial needs that our Sisters can provide through the Mother Kevin CARITAS Program.

If you have the same spirit of Caritas love and care as Mother Kevin and would like to to forever change the life of a Ugandan child, please contact us today or visit (www. caritas.us/sponsor) to meet some of these children and to start your support today. For your consideration of some mother’s unable to give him or her what is needed, thank you.

In the spirit of Mother Kevin’s caritas love, sharing in His love for us all…