"Immoral and illegal," Sister Megan Rice says.
"We're not being taken to the international court of justice and indicted the way Iran or some other place would," she said. Read more

So when the Volvo she was riding in one morning last week crested the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the skyscraper came into full view, it made a strong impression.

"Oh, my gosh," Sister Rice exclaimed. Drinking in the scenery and the panorama of New York Harbor, she added, "We're well on our way."

It was her fifth day of freedom after two years behind bars for a crime for which she is boldly unapologetic. In 2012, she joined two other peace activists in splattering blood and antiwar slogans on a nuclear plant in Tennessee that holds enough highly enriched uranium to make thousands of nuclear warheads. All three were convicted and sent to prison. But on May 8, an appellate court ruled that the government had overreached in charging them with sabotage, and ordered them set free.

Since her release on May 16, Sister Rice, a Manhattan native, had been reconnecting with family and friends, as well as seeing doctors, lawyers and reporters. She took time to visit St. Patrick's Cathedral, and she made her first purchase: peanut butter frozen yogurt topped with hot fudge.

Now, dressed in a sweatsuit that fellow inmates had given her, the nun was traveling to the American headquarters of her order in Rosemont, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia. The agenda was to confer with her superiors about her future — one in which she plans to continue her antinuclear activism. One threat was that the federal government might challenge the recent ruling and try to have her thrown back in prison.

"It would be an honor," Sister Rice said during the ride. "Good Lord, what would be better than to die in prison for the antinuclear cause?" Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times
• Image: Huffington Post

And after trying Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, we may have found the best superheroes yet: Nuns.

‘‘I may not believe in God, but I do believe in nuns,'' writes Jo Piazza, in her forthcoming book, If Nuns Ruled the World.

Piazza is an agnostic living in New York City who began interviewing nuns and found herself utterly charmed and inspired.

‘‘They eschew the spotlight by their very nature, and yet they're out there in the world every day, living the Gospel and caring for the poor,'' Piazza writes.

‘‘They don't hide behind fancy and expensive vestments, a pulpit, or a sermon.

I have never met a nun who rides a Mercedes-Benz or a Cadillac.

They walk a lot; they ride bikes.''

One of the most erroneous caricatures of nuns is that they are prim, Victorian figures cloistered in convents.

On the contrary, I've become a huge fan of nuns because I see them so often risking their lives around the world, confronting warlords, pimps and thugs, while speaking the local languages fluently.

In a selfish world, they epitomise selflessness and compassion.

There are also plenty of formidable nuns whom even warlords don't want to mess with, who combine reverence with ferocity, who defy the Roman Catholic Church by handing out condoms to prostitutes to protect them from HIV.

One of the nuns whom Piazza profiles is Sister Megan Rice.

She earned a graduate degree and then moved to Nigeria in 1962 to run a school for girls she had helped establish in a remote area with no electricity or running water.

After returning to the US, she began campaigning against nuclear weapons.

In 2012, at the age of 82, she masterminded the break-in of a nuclear complex in Tennessee, to call attention to the nuclear threat.

As she was handcuffed by armed security guards, she sang This Little Light of Mine.

She is now serving a prison sentence of almost three years. Continue reading

Source

• Nicholas Kristof in The Sydney Morning Herald

Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times journalist.