Irish missionary nun celebrates 40 years service in Brazil

Sr Margaret receives her human rights award in Brazil

Irish missionary, Sr Margaret Hosty, is celebrating 40 years of missionary work in Brazil where she recently received an award in recognition of her devotion to the poor and marginalised in her adopted country.

Sr Margaret grew up on a small farm at Cloonfad, Co Roscommon in the West of Ireland. One of a family of 12 - six boys and six girls - she says that she knew from an early age that she wanted to devote her life to missionary work in Latin America.

In those days, missionaries used to visit schools to talk about their work in far distant lands. That was a very effective way to create interest in the missions and to influence students to consider the missionary life.

In September 1967, she left home to enter the novitiate of the Sisters of Saint Louis in California along with two other Irish girls. After graduating from California State University at Fullerton, she began working as a teacher. Then in 1985 when the opportunity came to move to Brazil, she quickly accepted the opportunity.

"When I came to Brazil", she says, "I had to learn Portuguese, the language we speak here. I then taught English and also began working with a group of washer-women - women who wash other people's clothes by hand and iron them - accompanying them as they formed a syndicate to protect their rights as workers".

At the same time, she helped out in a parish on the outskirts of Goiânia where there wasn't a priest. It was through a colleague and friend in parish work that she first met someone with AIDS. "I knew almost nothing about AIDS at the time, she says, "but seeing the discrimination my new friend suffered, I realised that so many others were also ill-informed, leading to fear and stigma for those with HIV/AIDS. After his death, I felt I needed to do something about this, and that was how I began working with and for people living with HIV and AIDS."

In 1995, she co-founded an organisation called AAVE Group in the city of Goiânia. The AAVE Group (which in English stands for: AIDS, Assistance, Life, Hope) works with people with HIV/AIDS and their families. It provides psychological support and counselling, home and hospital visits, advice on their rights and legal entitlements, and training for income generating skills to help people who have lost their incomes due to HIV/AIDS become financially self-sufficient and provide for themselves and their families. Social support and a sense of community is central to the work of AAVE, creating a place for people to be welcome and escape the stigma and misunderstanding that still exists around HIV/AIDS. Advocacy and outreach in the poor and marginalised areas of Goiânia are also important.

Sr. Margaret points out how they "go out into the community, to schools, church groups, factories, and door-to-door in neighbourhoods to give correct information and to encourage early testing." The AAVE Group is funded entirely by donations and grant funding, including support from Misean Cara through the Irish Aid programme. It is supported by the Archdiocese of Goiânia. Trocaire - the Irish Church's aid agency - has also supported it.

In 2023, Sr Margaret was honoured with a Human Rights Award from the Legislative Assembly of the State of Goiás in recognition of her four decades of service to people living with HIV/AIDS.

"It's hard to believe" she says" that I'm 40 years in Brazil already. I feel privileged and blessed to have worked here for so long. It's been a challenge but a challenge I've enjoyed. Living and working among the poor with HIV has contributed greatly to making me who I am today. I am grateful to God, to the Sisters of St Louis, to the AAVE Group and to all those whose lives have touched mine.

"One thing I've learned from these people is that they have hope, the need hope, and that they live in the present. As people with a serious illness, they don't have the certainty of tomorrow. I think my work with people living with HIV/AIDS has helped me to live more in the present," she says when reflecting on her four decades of missionary endeavour.

You can learn more about Sr Margaret's missionary life on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9FKMQBTM7Y.

Readers wishing to know more about Sr Margaret's work in the AAVE Group, or to support it with a donation, can do so at https://grupoaave.org/en/

Matt Moran is an author and writer living in Co. Cork in the Republic of Ireland. He served as Chairman of the Board of Misean Cara that supports the development work of Irish missionaries in the Global South and has written extensively on missionary development. He also served on the Board of Nano Nagle Birthplace.