Corporate Stances

What We Say

Corporate Stance on Sanctuary for Salvadoran and
Guatemalan Refugees

We, the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, have adopted a corporate stance to support political refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala by means of public Sanctuary as witness to the injustice of the polity of the United States government to return these refugees to their homelands when there is well-founded fear of persecution because of political turmoil in their countries. We believe that political asylum should be granted these refugees in accord with the United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to Refugees and as adopted by the United States Refugee Act of 1980.

Adopted 1981

What We Do

     We sponsor two or more sisters each year to participate at demonstration to close the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) in Fort Benning, Georgia, for the weekend activities and vigil. 

     Coordinating through the Share and the Romero Foundations, we have sponsored sisters to El Salvador on the martyrdom anniversaries of Oscar Romero, the four church women, and the Jesuits. 

      We financially support justice work through our annually available Enaid Jones Social Justice Funds (a congregation fund) both within Central America as well as in the U.S. (i.e., East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, Guatemala Accompaniment Project, Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, to name only a few.)

      We also financially support Jubilee, a Catholic Social Justice Network, whose goal is to convince the WTO and the World Bank to forgive the national debt of impoverished countries so their societal recovery (education, health care, etc.) might begin in earnest.

      Our Marin Interfaith Community, in which we are active participants, stood in solidarity with our immigrant brothers and sisters at early morning vigils in the Canal area of San Rafael when the ICE officers raided the immigrant community there in 2008.

     We collaborated with the Western Dominicans (San Jose, Tacoma, and the Western Province) in putting on a day-long workshop in March of 2009 in Berkeley on immigration.