Sister Fabian’s Crusade

In the life of a journalist, there aren’t too many opportunities to write about an unambiguous good (and believe me, I’m always looking). Which is why I was so pleased when Mother Jones (and my friend and editor, Jennifer Vogel) expressed an interest in the groundbreaking HIV/AIDS home care and prevention program administered by Sister Fabian Han Fengxia, a Catholic nun, and medical doctor, in Shenyang.

The subsequent profile went online late last week, and can be found here.

HIV/AIDS prevention and the Catholic Church don’t always go together – especially in China – but Fabian handles such challenges with aplomb, courage, and straight-up determination. It’s also worth pointing out that Fabian’s work is representative of a quiet but growing Chinese Catholic social services movement that has the potential to become the largest non-profit social services delivery system in China – run, primarily, by women. Above, a photo of a Shenyang sister staffing an HIV/AIDS prevention information booth in front of Shenyang’s cathedral on World AIDS Day, 2007.

[Fabian received an MA from Fordham University in New York in 2005, and I wrote about the Maryknoll program that arranged for her education – and that of nearly 100 additional Chinese nuns, seminarians, priests, and laity since 1991 in June 2007 for Slate. That article can be found here.]