BVMs Marched For Peace, Against Nuclear Arms Race in 1982

Thirty-eight years ago, a group of 66 Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary chartered a bus and went to New York City to peacefully protest the nuclear arms race.

The rally at the Second Session of the United Nations Disarmament Conference drew more than 550,000 people who marched for world peace.

“It seemed past time for us to support the non-nuclear nations in their concern about the arms race,” wrote Jane (Bonaventure) McDonnell, BVM, a member of Citizens for Peace and a veteran of peace marches in the 1960s and 70s.

As marchers turned a corner near the United Nations, Coretta Scott King was just finishing her speech, Jane recalled in a reflection.

“With one impulse, all those massed curb-to-curb began ‘We Shall Overcome.’ It was a moving link between our convictions and marchers of the 60s and 70s.

“June 12 in New York City was like a new Pentecost. All of us seemed to feel and act the way we wish we did each day and always—friendly, trusting, peaceful, peaceable, more fully human than usual,” Jane wrote.