"Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people" - Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
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"Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people" - Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
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2010 Conference Photo Gallery
Highlights from the Conference day...
Our Peace Award Recipients: Sr. Maria Goretti Beckman honored withPCM’s 2010 Purple Ribbon for Peace Award by Pat Valaer, PCM St. Council Member
Coming from a large family, Goretti learned valuable peacemaking skills early in life from her parents. Besides raising their nine children, the Beckmans cared for needy children throughout the Depression and assisted many neighbors in their small, rural community. Service for Goretti became a way of life. Sixty years ago Goretti joined the Grand Rapids Dominicans and served the Church as a teacher, principal, director of religious education, pastoral associate and pastor. Bishop Kenneth Untener personally asked Goretti to serve as administrator of St. Joseph’s Church in Bay City during the absence of their pastor. It was during these years that Goretti met our beloved Helen Casey. Helen invited her to serve on the PCM State Council which she did with enthusiasm, creative energy and the ability to keep council members in high spirits with her keen wit and incomparable sense of humor. Goretti’s passion for peace led her to join the resistance opposing the nuclear arms race. She participated in many actions at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda, MI and served time in Bay County jail as a result. Ironically, several of the jail guards were her former students. Goretti’s nonviolent peacemaking efforts have taken her to many parts of the country. In Nevada, she stood in the desert with the Shoshone Indian Nation as they called for the return of their sacred land from the United States government, which had seized and desecrated it with the testing of nuclear weapons. Demonstrations calling for the end of nuclear proliferation have found her at the gates of Williams International in Walled Lake, MI and at the U.S. Naval Base in Kingsbury, Georgia. She has joined hands and prayed with members of the “Women’s Encampment Against the War” in Seneca, NY, and marched through the streets of Washington, D.C. to protest the institutions and ideologies that oppress our world. She has been arrested in front of the White House, only to be released and arrested again for continued acts of nonviolent resistance. Today Goretti serves on the Boards of the Women’s Center in Bay City and an inner city charter school in Saginaw where she is working with the teachers on developing nonviolent environments at school and at home for every student. She is involved with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious who are presently dealing with issues related to Afghanistan, Immigration and Nuclear Disarmament. Goretti has strived throughout her life to “keep the spirit of her parents alive in all that she said and did.” You, oh, good and faithful servant, have done that and so much more! It is with love and gratitude that we honor Sr. Maria Goretti Beckman with the Pax Christi Michigan 2010 Purple Ribbon for Peace Award at the PCM St. Conference on March 27 at Mercy High School Lydia Wylie-Kellermann received Young Adult Peacemaker Awardat PCM St. ConferenceBy Ann Lusch, Religion Teacher, Mercy High School
I first got to know Lydia when she was a sophomore in my Christian Morality class. A moment when her passion for peace came through was during a lesson on “lived values.” We discussed various qualities of values that we not only claim but actually live out, one of which was the willingness to express the value publicly. Lydia was one of a handful of students who accepted the invitation to do just that, to share a value with their classmates. Her brief speech was about the value of peace, and of her opposition to an invasion of Iraq that was then only in the planning stages. Lydia later became one of a dynamic group of student leaders for our Just Peace Club. Through club meetings and monthly early morning bagels-and-hot chocolate discussions open to all students and faculty, Lydia and her companions kept the war and other peace and justice issues in the consciousness of the school. As a senior, Lydia was one of those honored in 2004 with the Heart of Mercy award, given to students and faculty seen to live out Mercy core values of justice, mercy, human dignity, option for the poor, and service. She went on to graduate from Loyola University Chicago in 2008, with majors in theology and women’s studies, and minors in sociology, peace studies and pastoral ministry. With Michigan Peace Team she participated in a Third Party Nonviolent Intervention trip to Palestine in the summer of 2008 and wrote a moving account of the experience, titled “Sometimes We Dance, Sometimes We Cry” for the organization’s newsletter. The first one hundred days of the Obama Administration found her in Washington DC lobbying, educating, reflecting, participating in vigils and resisting as part of Witness Against Torture’s 100 Days Campaign to Shut Down Guantanamo and End Torture. She is on the board of Michigan Coalition for Human Rights. For six months Lydia resided at Jonah House, a nonviolent resistance community in Baltimore, MD. She is a co-founder and currently a member of the Jeanie Wylie Community in southwest Detroit, named in memory of her peace activist mother. The community is committed to Detroit, hospitality, resistance, and urban gardening. The group regularly hosts events open to all: conversation about issues, war resistance planning, direct action organizing, documentary nights and more. Lydia has also continued her association with the Just Peace Clubs of Mercy and U of D Jesuit H.S. as a guest speaker. Last November she graciously agreed to chaperone a group of nine Mercy students on their long bus ride with U of D Mercy to the SOA protest in Georgia. She met with the girls in advance to help prepare them for the trip and to increase their understanding of the purpose of the protest. I have recounted only some of the ways that Lydia has through her young life made peace a “lived value.” She is someone that I am glad to know and proud to claim for Mercy High School. Lydia Wylie-Kellermann came to Mercy as, and continues to be, one of our “women who make a difference.” Join us at the PCM St. Conference to witness Lydia’s award.
Workshops Included...
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Pax
Christi Michigan had the distinct honor of presenting Kathy Kelly: human rights
activist, poet, writer, feminist, teacher and prophetic leader. Kathy
co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (
Sister Maria Goretti Beckman, or “Goretti” as she is
affectionately known, was born during the Great Depression. When their
parish priest asked what her mother had, Goretti’s father jokingly replied,
“We got a dishwasher!” With these words, a true servant of God entered the
world and began life with a smile and a helping hand. 
I am happy that Pax Christi has chosen to honor Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
as the 2010 Young Adult Peacemaker. As a religion teacher and one of
the moderators of Mercy High School’s Just Peace Club, I have had the
privilege of knowing many young women interested in furthering the cause
of peace in our world. Lydia’s is at the top of the list.