Back row from left to right: Mary McCarthy, Claudia Lenhart, Riley McConnell, Abbey Lobello, Helen Flaherty, Summer Conley, Tess Zentarsky, Isabella Massaro,
teacher Dorrie Donahue. Front row from left to right: Bridget Deasy, Megan Nagy, Caroline Chung, Sophie Young, Grace Alexander, Abigail Cavalier,
Mary Kathryn Daigle, Caroline Albecete.
On a Mission to Serve
Oakland Catholic students promote faith and education in Guatemala.
By Jennifer Brozak
F
or the fifth year in a row, a group of students from Oakland
Catholic High School will travel to Guatemala on a mission trip,
heeding Pope Francis’ decree that the world’s youth must do all
they can to serve the less fortunate.
The trip, which will occur in late July, will guide 12 high school girls
into the impoverished and rural town of Patzún, a municipality in
Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Once there, the girls and their chaperones
will tend to the needs and education of students at Hogar de Niños
orphanage and San Bernardino School. During the weeklong trip, the
girls will teach the students English and promote the Catholic faith.
The mission trips began when Philip Miller, a professor working
at Carnegie Mellon, contacted an Oakland Catholic Spanish teacher,
Meghan Friday Goval. Miller had already led several mission trips to
the region, and asked the school to become involved.
After the group’s first trip in 2012, an “interdependence” was
established, says Dorrie Donahue, the director of mission integration
at Oakland Catholic.
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“It is a truly beautiful partnership,” says Donahue, a consecrated
layperson who will be traveling with the group for the fourth time this
summer. “The people of Patzún are simple in their pure love for God,
and we’re able to guide them in the renewal of their faith.”
The opportunity to attend the mission trip is highly competitive;