Canadian-born nun in YK for talk
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (May 04/01) - When Sister Loretta Bonokoski was young she wanted to be a cowgirl or a nun. She became a nun and moved to the desert Peruvian town of Moquegua and started an orphanage after meeting an abandoned little girl named Rosa Flores.
Now the orphanage has 318 children "aged zero to 80," as Bonokoski likes to say.
Bonokoski will be in Yellowknife to visit friends and family and talk about her work at the orphanage next Tuesday at the St. Patrick's Catholic Church. She has a million stories.
"I'm in Canada to get a rest after five years of work," said the 80-year-old, who grew up on a farm near Torquay, Sask.
Bonokoski will be showing slides of Peru's geography and on the Hogar Belen (home of Bethlehem) orphanage. She's here to raise awareness about her work and to raise funds for her project.
"We take in abandoned babies, abandoned mothers, unwed mothers, abused fathers and abandoned fathers," said Bonokoski in a phone interview from Winnipeg.
Bonokoski's great-niece Katherine Mann, 20, spent six months in the orphanage and she said it changed her life.
"It's like experiencing another world," said Mann, who works at Javaroma in the Centre Square Mall.
"You realize what's important," said Mann.
Terry Garchinski, one of the co-founders of Life Works counselling service in Yellowknife, worked with Bonokoski when he was 20 years old, 17 years ago, but still he talks about it like he returned yesterday.
"I find her amazing in the sense that what she chooses to do, she just does it," said Garchinski.
Garchinski said Bonokoski is an example of what everyone can be.
"She's a remarkable person, but human," said Garchinski.
"She speaks about our potential to do kindness to others."
Moquegua is a desert town in Peru about the size of Yellowknife near the Bolivian border and about 700 kilometres southeast of the capital, Lima.
Bonokoski is part of the order of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions. She was selected to go to Peru in 1968 as a missionary.
Early in her stint Bonokoski was walking in the late Peruvian evening when she saw nine-year-old Rosa Flores huddled in a corner of the plaza.
She wouldn't talk. Bonokoski took her home and gave her food.
From this an orphanage sprouted in 1976.
"It's situated in a very poor section of Moquegua called San Francisco," said Bonokoski.
"There's a whole lot of poor houses and behind us are the high desert mountains and beautiful green valleys," she said, describing the setting of the orphanage.
"We help the most needy, meeting spiritual and material needs to prepare them for the future," she said.
