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Sister Joan Healy
Honorary doctorate recipient Sister Joan Healy RSJ inspired hundreds of 2009 Faculty of Health Sciences graduates and their friends and families with her graduation address on knowledge, spirit and hope.
Sister Joan was recognised at Australian Catholic University's (ACU) Sydney graduation at Darling Harbour Convention Centre for her significant contributions to social work. Particularly, in supporting community-based care for children and families in need, both in Australia and overseas.“As I ponder over my already long lifespan I remember that over and again, in difficult times, I have seen people clinging to hope and building a future against extraordinary odds,” Sister Joan said.
“I know and have listened to survivors of the Holocaust, survivors of the Pol Pot regime, the stolen generations, Tibetan activists in Lassa, political prisoners in many lands.
“With my fingers I have traced the word ‘esperanza’, ‘hope’ scratched deeply into a stone wall of a prison cell in Dili.”
Referring to Australians’ response to the bushfire crisis in Victoria, Sister Joan spoke of the emergence of hope.
“We have seen that in the midst of crisis communities have come together. We have seen that what is tender, brave and creative in the human spirit comes to the fore. Hope is firmly grounded in this grace …
“Cambodian village people who were my neighbours for years are invariably poetic. They would say, ‘You see a small light in deep darkness. You shield it; you blow on it gently until it is a strong light that shows all of us the way forward.’
“I am talking of God acting in the hearts of women and men, acting in communities. It is in this that I hope. It is there to be seen in everyday life.
“This light of goodness, this light of God, is a glimmer of beauty and truth and meaning in the darkest times. It can be recognised, respected, nurtured until the light and the truth show the way forward community by community. Not waiting for light after the darkness but in the darkness recognising light.”
She described joining a circle of Aboriginal elders, women and grandmothers in a remote community in central Australia to discuss the stolen generations with a social worker who had worried about removing children from families in that community.
“One of the elders, a strong and motherly woman, moved around the edge of the circle until she stood behind the social worker. She extended her hands as a priest does in absolution. She said, ‘Don’t you be blaming yourself about that. We don’t think of you as the welfare. You worry about these things just as we do.’
“That day, amid dust and heat, I saw courage, tenderness, solidarity, forgiveness and commitment. Grace. I saw the emergence of a way forward.”
Sister Joan spoke of “unprecedented times of need in 2009” and repeated Nelson Mandela’s words ‘sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation’.
Sister Joan is shown with a soldier blinded by a landmine in Cambodia.
