, executive director of Notre Dame’s , says she felt like she was living in two worlds as the coronavirus rapidly spread through Italy in February. She watched a disaster unfold in the north of the country while life in Rome continued unfazed — and students prepared to attend big parties for Carnival, the festival just before Lent begins.

“No one would be wearing masks,” she said. “Transportation was running as normal.”

Dall’Olio is getting high marks from the University for how she reacted, keeping a cool head and taking all the right measures as the world’s second major COVID-19 hotspot was exploding around her.

“Silvia’s leadership was heroic in dealing with the various dimensions of the crisis,” said , vice president and associate provost for internationalization, adding that she showed “a wonderful mix of clarity and calm, analytic acumen, creative problem-solving and empathy.”

She credits her team in Rome, the University’s second-largest program abroad, and counterparts at and the University’s Emergency Operations Center for the students’ ultimate safety.

“Smart people with good hearts,” she said. “That’s a good combination.”

As for Dall’Olio, she said the encroaching virus put her into pragmatic mode.

“I think I’m a very calm and rational person normally,” she said. “But in a way, I respond even more so to a high level of stress by entering into that zone in which you dissect things and you take one at a time. At least you have the idea that you are somewhat in control of what is happening. You’re not just being slammed by things, not reacting to them, but more like preempting them and anticipating them.”

Dall’Olio found Notre Dame through her now husband, Michael Driessen, a political science professor at John Cabot University in Rome. They met as students in Bologna, her hometown, through the community of L’Arche, a place where adults with and without intellectual disabilities share their lives together. They decided to get married, and three weeks after the wedding, she landed on the Notre Dame campus, where Driessen was earning his doctorate.

An assistant professional specialist of Romance languages, Dall’Olio earned a master’s degree and taught while at Notre Dame. She holds a doctoral degree in linguistics and second language pedagogy, and has worked internationally as a translator and language tutor, including at the Italian Embassy in Qatar’s capital, Doha.

Dall’Olio has led the gateway for three years, but has worked there in various capacities since it opened in fall 2014.

“I’ve loved it since the very beginning,” she said. “(Professor Ted Cachey) was the director and I was just helping him as Notre Dame built the idea of this Rome gateway from scratch. It’s a job that’s almost 360 degrees — in terms of possibilities, resources also, and the great interest Notre Dame has shown in Rome. We feel very supported in doing something that it is very rare to see other universities do in Italy.”

She is particularly proud of the gateway’s formal designation last year by the Italian Education Ministry as an Italian research institution, and the Rome International Scholars Program, which combines traditional learning with research and internships.

In her time as executive director, Dall’Olio had never had emergencies involving more than one or two students. While she had lived in and traveled often to the Middle East, a volatile region, she said nothing in her past prepared her for this.

In fact, it was the opposite. The local relationships she and other faculty and staff built while working at the Rome gateway are what really paid off in a rapidly changing situation. They had close relationships with local emergency and health officials, among others, whom they trusted for reliable information on the ground.

They also had relationships with local universities where students were taking classes, which helped them make a seamless transition to distance learning at a moment when it was not clear that the rest of the semester would be online.

Dall’Olio started monitoring the virus’s arrival to Italy in late January, a full month before anyone thought the country of only 60 million people would lead the world for a time in cases and deaths. She wasn’t at ease. She was hearing firsthand from her family in the northern parts of Italy as a few isolated cases seemed to morph quickly into an outbreak.

“We all knew people who died,” she said. “Because of that direct connection, maybe it was simply more vivid to me that this could happen” in Rome.

Back at Notre Dame, the University had been following the coronavirus since mid-January, focused on the global gateway and centers in China, the country where the virus originated. As the virus spread in Italy, Dall’Olio and , associate director of international travel and safety, were talking and trading emails. Their communications increased to daily by the latter part of February, when Dall’Olio activated the gateway’s Incident Response Team to consider their options. New cases in northern Italy were “spiraling,” as Signoracci put it. “It was only a matter of time.”

Dall’Olio and the University’s Emergency Operations Center only had to look to China for the worst-case scenario — people locked down without travel in or out of an area for indefinite periods of time. They didn’t want Notre Dame students to get stuck in a location where the University couldn’t reach them.

On Sunday, Feb. 23, the Italian government started putting northern towns in quarantine and canceling large events such as soccer games and Carnival. Dall’Olio and the EOC started meeting twice a day beginning Monday, Feb. 24, when Dall’Olio discovered another piece of game-changing information: Notre Dame students who had traveled to the north appeared to be getting sick.

***

Imagine you’re 20 years old, studying mechanical engineering, and you’re already a seasoned traveler — hitting as many countries as your age in just two years at Notre Dame.�� Your goal is to have a formative experience on every continent as an undergraduate.

Junior Henry Hentges of Jefferson City, Missouri, had already spent a spring break in Cuba and a summer in Rome, taught English in Peru, traveled through Europe and Africa and did research in Colombia, all via Notre Dame programs.

He was also seasoned in international crises interfering with his education.

Hentges originally planned to study in Hong Kong for spring 2020, but the program was scuttled in November because of the political unrest there. He chose Rome as a backup to study abroad because it was the best option for getting the right coursework, and in just seven weeks he had traveled to five more countries, including the Czech Republic and Tunisia.

The same weekend the Italian government started to shut down the north, he was returning from a ski trip in the Italian Alps on a train that took him through Milan, the city about to become the next global center for cases of COVID-19. Though he didn’t get off the train, a flood of people boarded, doubling the number of passengers. The next morning, back in Rome, he woke up with a terrible fever and aches all over his body. He attributed the pain to his first time skiing, but he couldn’t get out of bed to go to class.

***

Dall’Olio told the EOC that same morning that five students had just returned from the hot zone in the north and two of them, including Hentges, had fevers and other symptoms of COVID-19. She consulted the University’s medical staff in Rome, and was told to monitor the symptoms and call back if they got worse. There was no order to isolate at that point. Hentges lived in the University residence with seven roommates. His rector told him to stay as far away from them as possible.

While Dall’Olio monitored government and health websites and announcements on the ground, the EOC weighed updates in case numbers and deaths in Italy and worldwide.

“Earlier that week we decided that if the State Department or the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) raised their travel advisory levels that we would suspend operations,” Signoracci said.

The EOC was also benchmarking other universities with travel abroad programs. Early that same week, New York University suspended its program in Florence.

“That was a really big deal for the study abroad world,” Signoracci said. “Everybody in my circles was talking about it.”

On Tuesday, Feb. 25, Dall’Olio called the students together for the first time to put out some guidelines. They were forbidden from traveling to northern Italy, and she encouraged them to consider canceling any travel plans for the upcoming weekend and for spring break. For now, they needed to stick close to Rome.

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was saying, “Italy is a safe country and probably safer than many others” the very same day, according to the New York Times.

Students had a hard time processing what they were hearing. This was an Asia problem, not Europe. “It was a challenging conversation,” Signoracci said. “It wasn’t something that they thought was going to impact them.”

They had a lot of questions, and as Dall’Olio tried to pull together the answers, she called another mandatory meeting Thursday, Feb. 27. Hentges had a plane ticket for Egypt that weekend. Still sick, he decided to go anyway and headed straight for the airport after the mandatory student meeting.

***

Imagine you’re a young woman from Niles, Michigan, living a childhood dream to see Europe. Rome was by far the biggest city architecture student Natalie Pratt had ever experienced, and she fell in love. So vibrant, so full of art and beauty and culture. She sketched everywhere in the city and enjoyed the musicality of the Italian language, as well as hearing countless other foreign languages on the street — “rather than just hearing English on the streets in places like Niles, Michigan.”

Pratt was so excited to study architecture in the same place where the masters had gone for centuries.��

“I have no excuse not to be great,” she wrote to her mother. “I’m getting the same education that all the great architects of the past have gotten.”

She traveled to Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Germany and England. Just two weeks before the Italian government started shutting down the north, she had been in Lombardy province, which was rapidly becoming the center of the pandemic. Everything had been normal. Now she was seeing chaos and food shortages on the news. One student’s friend at a university in Milan was sent home. The virus started to dominate their conversations.

“They won’t send us home, will they?” she asked her classmates.

“If they do, we’ll get an apartment and stay,” they all decided. “We won’t take the ticket.”

There was no way anyone was going to cut short her magical year.

***

In the early hours of Saturday, Feb. 29, students started getting the alert on their phones that they were dreading: the CDC travel warning had gone to 3, advising travelers to avoid all nonessential international travel. Pratt went to bed but couldn’t sleep. At 2 a.m. she got the confirmation that study abroad was indeed being suspended, and students had to report to a mandatory meeting at 8 a.m. She called her parents with the news and started to cry.

“At that point I knew: Oh my gosh, it’s over,” she said.

Her parents were relieved.

When Pratt arrived at the meeting, she already had a plane ticket to leave Italy the next day, Sunday. If students didn’t comply, they would no longer be enrolled at Notre Dame. There would be no renting an apartment.

There were so many things she wanted to do one last time. She heard that architecture students had a tradition of walking the city on their last night. She and her classmates did just that — the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps. She arrived at the airport at 5 a.m. having not slept for more than 24 hours.

Hentges got the message on Saturday in Cairo that he was to return to Rome immediately. But he was oh-so-close to the pyramids and couldn’t bear not to see them. Fate was on his side. There were no available flights back to Rome until Sunday, the same day he was scheduled to leave for the United States. He would have exactly three hours in Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport between flights. He called a fellow student in Rome and asked him to pack up everything in his room and meet him Sunday morning with his suitcase at the airport.

Then Hentges went to see the pyramids: “So cool.”

***

As it turned out, Dall’Olio was ahead of the pandemic. All Notre Dame students from the Rome Global Gateway were back on U.S. soil by Monday, March 2 — two days before Italy’s schools closed and a full week before the entire country went on lockdown. Students at Notre Dame’s Jerusalem Global Gateway were evacuated March 10, and then all other study abroad was suspended on March 11.

“Silvia and her team are just amazing,” Signoracci said. “They get a lot of credit and really paved the way for us to suspend operations in our other programs, having made that process as seamless as possible the first time around.”

All indications now are that Hentges probably didn’t have COVID-19. He sits at home in Jefferson City without any travel distractions, thinking about how his generation will be defined by the double-edged sword that is globalization.

“To realize that, you know, it’s not all about me,” he said. “It’s about the world community at large. And sometimes you have to make concessions for the benefit of mankind in general.”

Pratt sits in Niles, where she would give anything for one more cappuccino and cornetto con crema in her favorite Rome café. She too has perspective on how fortunate she is that her only problem in the pandemic was having to leave Rome.

“Is that so bad compared to what lots of people are being asked to suffer right now?” she said.

For Dall’Olio and the Rome gateway staff, the ordeal was a moment of truth.

“It was a time in which we truly needed every single person to contribute probably more than even they thought they could do,” she said. “And the fact that I think we were all in to do it was an important confirmation of something you can’t improvise, something that trainings will not create for you — which is an incredible esprit de corps.”

A startling statement, perhaps. But that was the consensus of a group of London-based journalists, experts and members of the , who met Wednesday night (Nov. 6) to discuss the future of Britain.

The group was led by , London Law Program director, with remarks from , Notre Dame Law 91��Ƶ dean. Executive Vice President ��and Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization ��were also in attendance, along with journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS News and other media outlets.

The event was designed to introduce international journalists to and Notre Dame London Law Program in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame (USA) in England (UNDE) board��meeting on Thursday (Nov. 7). Each semester, Notre Dame in London draws, on average, 140 undergraduate and 30 law students seeking study abroad. The school is staffed by adjuncts in London and professors from the main campus who visit for a semester to teach.

“Having lived and covered Brexit for three years, it was great to be in a room with so many perspectives, and to realize that the questions regarding Brexit are still unanswered,” said Susana Seijas, a freelance producer who works for PBS Newshour and Mira Studio in Chicago.

“It was a very useful forum to discuss some very perplexing issues.”

One of those issues is that Brits continue to have little to no understanding of what it would mean in their lives to leave the European Union. The most optimistic supporters want out from under the yoke of continental regulation and want to see the U.K. become a lightly regulated business state like Singapore or Switzerland. Naysayers see trouble with trade, tariffs and a drop in standard of living. The cost of limbo so far has been a 30 percent drop in the real estate market, according to one panelist, and an unprecedented lack of trust on the part of the people toward their elected officials, another pointed out.

The panelists agreed to speak without names so they could share more freely.

Earlier that day, Parliament closed down until the Dec. 12 election that will determine who will lead the country. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to win a majority of parliamentarians who are more sympathetic to leaving the EU and so will help to endorse the deal he negotiated with Brussels. The deal didn’t pass in time for the Oct. 31 Brexit deadline, forcing Britain to ask for another extension. Some say conservatives continue to be ahead the polls, while others say Johnson could lose his seat in London.

Even if they knew election results, the panelists couldn’t predict what the new parliament would decide on Brexit. When one journalist asked if Britain could negotiate a better deal with Brussels, one government participant said it depends on whose Brexit you’re negotiating.

Meanwhile, the Irish are worried about a hard border between north and south if Northern Ireland leaves the European Union, potentially leading to a return to the violence of the past. The government official said he can’t predict what would happen with Scotland, a part of the United Kingdom that wants to stay in the EU.

“We could be here a year from now doing the same thing,” he said.

One panelist compared the uncertainty and revolt that led to Brexit to street protests and political rebellion seen all over the world, including in Lebanon, Chile and the United States. She said political leaders failed to recognize the impact of the 2008 crisis on lower-income families and the fact that they haven’t recovered. She thinks most governments still don’t get it.

“We’re going to keep repeating the same mistakes,” she said.

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian��Catholic Archbishop��Borys��Gudziak received the 2019 Notre Dame Award on Saturday (June 29) for his work for religious and academic freedom, and for his courageous and visionary leadership of the first Catholic university established in the territory of the former Soviet Union.

University of Notre Dame President , presented the award, saying Archbishop Gudziak has shown that “the aspiration of Catholic education is not simply��the imparting of��knowledge and skills, but��the transformation of��lives and ultimately��the healing of a broken world.”

Archbishop Gudziak is widely known in the Catholic Church and the Eastern European region for rebuilding the faithful in an independent Ukraine after the Ukrainian Catholic Church was banned under the Soviet Union and its clergy were jailed or murdered. He also built the Ukrainian Catholic University into one of the country’s most reputable institutions, and established a campus center in the L’Arche community model for integrating the disabled into university life.

“In the face of innumerable challenges,��in a society traumatized by war, genocide and political oppression,��he��and his colleagues��have��made the��Ukrainian Catholic University a center for cultural thought, Christian witness and��the��education of a generation who can bring��to Ukraine��healing and hope,” Father Jenkins said in his remarks.��

In accepting the award, Bishop Gudziak highlighted the importance of Catholic universities in general and the leadership in particular that the University of Notre Dame can provide in expanding Catholic scholarship around the world.

Archbishop Borys Gudziak

As a person who established a Catholic university where none existed, he said he would urge Pope Francis in a meeting next week “to launch a challenge to the global community of Catholic universities to come together with the leadership of the church and to go where there are no Catholic universities, and offer the wonderful education that our tradition has been disseminating so generously.”

“We can speak with the wisdom of the church and with the knowledge of the school,” Archbishop Gudziak said. “We can witness and stand and swim against the current.”

The Notre Dame Award��is presented��to “men and women whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals��for��which the University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”

Previous recipients of the Notre Dame Award have included President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter of the United States; St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta; John Hume of Northern Ireland; Cardinal Vinko Puljić, archbishop of Sarajevo; L’Arche community founder Jean Vanier of Trosly-Breuil, France; and most recently, the Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz, a group of Mexican mothers organized to search for their missing loved ones in the face of criminal violence and state complacency.

Father Jenkins highlighted Archbishop Gudziak’s work in documenting the underground church in Ukraine during the Soviet era.

“Hundreds of priests��and nuns��in Lviv alone��were deported, imprisoned or murdered by the secret police. Seminaries were shuttered,” Father Jenkins said. “Through your diligent, scholarly work, the world now has a permanent record of these outrages, and of how courageous Ukrainians kept their faith alive, even in the gulag.”

This is the first time the award is being conferred on someone of Ukrainian descent.

As part of the award ceremony, Notre Dame and the Ukrainian Catholic University signed a memorandum of understanding for the two institutions to “develop collaborations and exchanges in fields of shared interest and expertise.”

��Archbishop Gudziak, an American-born son of Ukrainian immigrants, worked in his parents’ homeland starting in 1992, and founded the Institute of Church History in��Lviv to chronicle the Soviet period when the church was banned. He was ordained to the priesthood six years later and was named vice rector and then rector of��Lviv��Theological Academy, the institution that later grew into the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Founded��in 2002, Ukrainian Catholic University is built��on the “pillars of the martyrs and the marginalized” — the martyrs��being those who suffered and died��under communist repression,��and the intellectually disabled��who too often exist��on the margins��of society. Archbishop��Gudziak��considered honoring both as essential to rebuilding trust in Ukrainian society.

Influenced��early in his life by Rev. Henri��Nouwen��and his devotion��to people with special needs, Archbishop��Gudziak��created the Emmaus Center on the Ukrainian Catholic University campus,��a place where people with��developmental disabilities��and their families receive spiritual support and��share their lives with students.

��​In a Ukrainian Weekly story,��Archbishop��Gudziak��said��he considers the developmentally disabled “professors of human relations��…��We need the gifts they have. They��don’t��care if you’re a rector, a doctor��or how rich you are. What they force us to confront is the most important pedagogical question of all: Can you love me?”

Despite working in an independent Ukraine, he still felt political pressure from the pro-Russian government for his advocacy for open thought and discussion. In 2010, Archbishop Gudziak described a visit from a Ukrainian security agent warning him about student protests against the then-pro-Russian government, and asking him to sign a letter of a pattern under the KGB that would have required him to inform on students. The archbishop refused to even read the letter.

He also was threatened with deportation at one point and said he had evidence that his phone was tapped.

“The revival of such practices is a conscious attempt to revive the methods of the Soviet totalitarian past and to re-instill fear in a society that was only beginning to feel its freedom,” he wrote at the time. “Speaking and writing openly about these issues is the most peaceful and effective manner of counteracting efforts to secretly control and intimidate students and citizens.”

The archbishop invoked the spirit of the martyrs in 2014��during the “Revolution of Dignity”��protests in the��Ukrainian��capital Kyiv that led to the fall of the pro-Soviet government of Viktor Yanukovych.��After��a 29-year-old professor,��Bohdan��Solchanyk, was killed during a peaceful pro-democracy protest, Archbishop��Gudziak��and other religious leaders of all faiths joined with the protesters.

Raised in Syracuse, New York, Archbishop��Gudziak��stayed close to home to earn his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and biology from Syracuse University. He then studied in Rome at Holy Sofia College and the Pontifical Urban University, earning a theology degree, after which he received his doctorate in Slavic and Byzantine cultural history from Harvard University.

Archbishop Gudziak was elevated recently by Pope Francis as archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic��Archeparchy��of Philadelphia��(the equivalent of an archdiocese), which includes the District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and parts of eastern Pennsylvania. He also holds the title of metropolitan, making him the top spiritual leader for all Ukrainian Catholics in the United States.

Before his current appointment in Philadelphia, he was head of the archeparchy serving Ukrainian Catholics in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland. He is the author of more than 50 papers on the history of the Church, theological training and other topics, and last year received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Syracuse.

He remains president and chair of the board of UCU and a member of the permanent synod of the Church, which meets four times annually, usually in Kyiv.

Contact:��Paul Browne, vice president for public affairs and communications, at��pbrowne@nd.edu

A grassroots group of mothers searching for their missing loved ones in Mexico’s Gulf state of Veracruz received the 2018 Notre Dame Award Tuesday for their tireless work on behalf of victims of drug violence and dedication to seeking truth.

��

��The University’s president, , personally greeted more than 100 members of the Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz attending a breakfast in Mexico City in their honor as they filed to the stage and photographs of their missing loved ones flashed on overhead screens.

��

The group was recognized as emblematic of Mexican civil society’s demand for justice for the deaths and disappearances in the country’s 12-year-old war on organized crime. More than 30,000 people have gone missing in that time, according to government estimates. Authorities across the country have been slow or reluctant to investigate, causing citizen groups such as Colectivo Solecito to take up the work themselves.

��

��“They and other mothers from colectivos across Mexico have carried the burden of not knowing what happened to their missing loved ones. Or the burden of learning, only much later, that their loved ones were murdered,” Father Jenkins said. “The University of Notre Dame, named for the Blessed Mother, honors these women today with the Notre Dame Award, an international recognition conferred on only 10 persons previously, including Mother Teresa.”

��

In accepting the award, Lucia de Los Angeles Díaz Genao of the Colectivo told the story of the mothers sitting in government offices day after day, looking for help, for something to happen, only to see the cases languish and collect dust.

��

“We learned at once that it was much easier and less painful to fight than to stay passive and wait,” Díaz said. “Finally, we learned that the struggle is long, and that it is essential to keep fighting, putting our hearts into it, with the hope that one day we will come out of the darkness and our motto becomes reality. … The sun will shine again.”

��

On Monday, Father Jenkins concelebrated mass officiated by Veracruz Roman Catholic Bishop Luis Felipe Gallardo Martín del Campo in Veracruz at the site of one of the largest mass graves in Mexico.

��

Solecito Colectivo started as a group of eight mothers in 2014 who decided to dig in areas rumored to be mass graves in search of human remains. They raise their own money to pay for the searches and initially received no help or recognition from the state government or justice system in Veracruz.

��

Then in 2016, the group received a huge tip from an anonymous source: a map depicting the exact locations of more than 120 clandestine graves at Colinas de Santa Fe, the site of Monday’s Mass. The group’s search so far has led to the discovery of 295 bodies and some 22,000 fragments of human remains. They now have the help of state and federal authorities, but identification of those remains has been slow.

��

The award was presented before the start of a one-day conference on “The Challenges of Transitional Justice in Mexico” organized by Notre Dame in Mexico City. Convening a group of international practitioners, members from the incoming Mexican government, groups of victims and their families, international and Mexican scholars and members of Mexican civil society, the conference will explore how a process of truth, justice and reconciliation for the victims of the country’s drug war may be implemented.

��

The Notre Dame Award was first presented in 1992 and recently was revived to honor the “women and men whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals for which the University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”

University of Notre Dame President commended a group of mothers of the missing Monday for their courage in the face of tragedy during Mass at the site of one of Mexico’s largest mass graves, where scores of victims of the country’s drug violence were found buried.

��

“The weapons and the violence of those who took your children are strong. But your courage and your love are even stronger,” Father Jenkins told the Colectivo in his homily. “Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your love. Thank you for demanding the truth. Thank you for insisting on justice.”�� ��

��

Father Jenkins concelebrated the Mass, officiated by His Excellency Bishop Luis Felipe Gallardo Martín del Campo of Veracruz, as part of the University’s honoring the Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz — the mothers who discovered the graves ��— with the 2018 Notre Dame Award. Workers scouring more than 100 acres of hillside and scrub land in the last two years in an area known as Colinas de Santa Fe have found 295 bodies and some 22,000 fragments of human remains, according to federal police and volunteers at the site.

��

Previous winners of the Notre Dame Award, which recognizes dedication to faith, peace, justice and care for the vulnerable, have included Mother Teresa and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. This is the first time the award has been given to a group or individual in Mexico.

��

Father Jenkins compared the mothers’ grief to that of the Virgin Mary, for whom Notre Dame is named, in the death of her son, Jesus Christ.

��

“Your great love did not end with the disappearance of that child.�� You have come together to reveal the truth about your loved ones who were taken from you,” he said. “In this you are so much like Mary, our Lady, who endured such sorrows, but endured them with love and faith.”

��

More than 160 people attended the Mass, held in a dusty, sun-battered clearing of Colinas de Santa Fe dotted by small poles bearing numbers to mark the graves that have already been excavated. Many were overcome with emotion, and Father Jenkins greeted and hugged the mothers after the Mass.

��

When asked by a news reporter if forgiveness was possible for the people who committed these crimes, he responded, “Yes. But first we need transparency. We need to know what happened to all these young people. Let us know what happened to our children. Unless that happens, I don’t think the process of forgiveness can be complete.”

��

Cuitlahuac Garcia, governor-elect of Veracruz, attended the Mass and promised to work with the Colectivos and victims to pacify the state, which has seen a spike in violence and disappearances during Mexico’s 12-year drug war. ��Former state officials, including ex-Gov. Javier Duarte, currently sit in jail accused of financials crimes, with some under investigation for forced disappearances.

��

“We will keep people informed. We won’t grandstand. We won’t be authoritarian, and the victims in these cases will always accompany us, always,” said Garcia, who takes office Dec. 1.

��

The Colectivo and workers they hire with their own money — raised through food sales, raffles and donations — started with no outside help. They now have the support of a university archaeologist and forensic experts from the federal police, who excavate and process evidence once members of the Colectivo have located a potential criminal burial site.

��

The group was formed in 2014 in the face of government inaction on cases of missing persons, some of the casualties of a 12-year government war with drug cartels.�� Estimates include over 130,000 homicides related to criminal conflicts; more than 30,000 disappearances, some forced; and more than 320,000 displaced people to date.

��

The mothers decided to dig in areas rumored to be mass graves on their own. As a result of their labor, they received an anonymous tip in 2016 — ��a map showing the location of graves in Colinas de Santa Fe, the undeveloped, secluded hillside behind a housing subdivision.

��

Father Jenkins will formally present the award to the Colectivo at breakfast in Mexico City on Tuesday. He led a Notre Dame delegation to Mexico that including Chief of Staff Ann Firth, the Rev. Gerard Olinger, Vice President for Mission Engagement and Church Affairs, Michael Pippenger, Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization, and Paul Browne, Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications.

The University’s president, , will present the Colectivo Solecito with the 2018 Notre Dame Award at a breakfast ceremony in Mexico City as a group emblematic of Mexican civil society’s demands that authorities, some in collusion with or coerced by criminal groups, act against violence and corruption.

On Monday, Father Jenkins is scheduled to visit the port city of Veracruz, where the Colectivo was founded, and to celebrate Mass at Colinas de Santa Fe, one of the largest sites of mass graves in Mexico. He will honor the families of the victims and bless the souls of the anonymous dead.

In selecting the Colectivo, Father Jenkins praised them for “heroic witness to human dignity and service to the noble cause of justice itself.” It is the first time the international award will be presented to a Mexican individual or group.

Previous recipients of the Notre Dame Award have included Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter; St. (Mother) Theresa of Calcutta; John Hume of Northern Ireland; Cardinal Vinko Puljić, Archbishop of Sarajevo; and most recently, Judge Sergio Moro of Brazil.

“The previous recipients, each in their own way, have been pillars of conscience and integrity,” Father Jenkins said. “Notre Dame recognizes that the Colectivo’s courageous work has drawn needed attention to victims’ disappearances, and has helped to relieve some of the suffering visited upon the families of the victims of such intolerable violence. The Colectivo has made a marked difference for all Mexicans and for humankind at large in our universal thirst for justice.”

Solecito Colectivo de Veracruz started as a group of eight mothers in 2014 who decided to dig in areas rumored to be mass graves in search of human remains. They raise their own money to pay for the searches and initially received no help or recognition from the state government or justice system in Veracruz.

Then in 2016, the group received a huge tip from an anonymous source: a map depicting the exact locations of more than 120 clandestine graves at Colinas de Santa Fe. The group’s search so far has led to nearly 300 bodies and thousands of fragments of remains. They now have the help of state and federal authorities, but identification of those remains has been slow. There are many such groups of families around the country searching for their loved ones in the face of an absent state.

“We recognize the Colectivo’s steadfast faith and tenacity,” Father Jenkins said. “It inspires our students to engage the world as forces for good when confronted with injustice and suffering.”

The award will be presented during a one-day conference on “The Challenges of Transitional Justice in Mexico” organized by Notre Dame in Mexico City. Convening a group of international practitioners, members from the incoming Mexican government, groups of victims and their families, international and Mexican scholars and members of Mexican civil society, the conference will explore how a process of truth, justice and reconciliation for the victims of the country’s 12-year drug war may be implemented.

Casualties include over 130,000 homicides related to criminal conflicts, more than 30,000 disappearances and more than 320,000 displaced people to date.

The Notre Dame Award was first presented in 1992 and recently was revived to honor the “women and men whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals for which the University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”

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Madres de los desaparecidos recibirán el Premio Notre Dame 2018

La Universidad de Notre Dame reconocerá el martes a un grupo comunitario de madres que buscan a sus seres queridos desaparecidos en el estado de Veracruz, ubicado en las costas del Golfo de México, por su trabajo en favor de las víctimas de la violencia del narcotráfico y su dedicación a la búsqueda de la verdad. ����

El Presidente de la Universidad, el Revdo. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., hará entrega del Notre Dame Award 2018 al Colectivo Solecito durante un desayuno ceremonia en la Ciudad de México como grupo representativo de la sociedad mexicana que al paso del tiempo demanda a las autoridades, algunas coludidas o coaccionadas por los grupos criminales, a actuar contra la violencia y la corrupción. ����

El Padre Jenkins tiene programada el lunes una visita al Puerto de Veracruz, lugar donde se fundó el Colectivo, y oficiará una misa en las Colinas de Santa Fe, una de los sitios de fosas masivas más grande de México. Honrará a los familiares de las víctimas y bendecirá las almas de los muertos anónimos.

Al elegir al Colectivo, el Padre Jenkins reconoció su “testimonio heroico de la dignidad humana y el servicio a la noble causa de la justicia misma”. Es la primera vez que este premio internacional será entregado a un grupo o individuo mexicano.

Entre los ganadores anteriores del Notre Dame Award se encuentran Jimmy y Rosalynn Carter, la Santa (Madre) Teresa de Calcuta, John Hume de Irlanda del Norte, el Cardenal Vinko Pujlic, el Arzobispo de Sarajevo, y más recientemente, el Juez Sergio Moro de Brasil.

“Los ganadores anteriores del Notre Dame Award, cada uno a su manera, han sido pilares de conciencia e integridad”, dijo el Padre Jenkins. “La Universidad de Notre Dame reconoce que la valiente labor del Colectivo ha atraído la atención necesaria hacia los desaparecidos y ha contribuido a aliviar una parte del sufrimiento que aflige a los familiares de las víctimas de la violencia intolerable. El Colectivo ha marcado una gran diferencia en todos los mexicanos, y en la humanidad en general, ante la sed de justicia universal”.

El Colectivo Solecito de Veracruz inició en 2014 siendo un grupo de ocho madres de familia que decidieron excavar en áreas que se rumoraba eran fosas masivas en busca de restos humanos. Recaudaron sus propios fondos para pagar las búsquedas y al inicio no recibieron ayuda o reconocimiento alguno por parte del gobierno del estado o del sistema de justicia de Veracruz. ��

Después, en 2016, el grupo recibió información importante de una fuente anónima: un mapa que especificaba la ubicación exacta de más de 120 fosas clandestinas en las Colinas de Santa Fe. Al día de hoy, la búsqueda de este grupo ha llevado a encontrar cerca de 300 cuerpos y miles de fragmentos de restos humanos. Actualmente cuentan con la ayuda de las autoridades estatales y federales, pero la identificación de los restos ha sido muy lenta. Existen muchos grupos y familias en todo el país buscando a sus seres queridos de cara a un Estado ausente.

“Reconocemos la inalterable fe y tenacidad del Colectivo”, dijo el Padre Jenkins. “Inspiran a nuestros alumnos a involucrarse como agentes de bien cuando se enfrentan a la injusticia y el sufrimiento”.

El premio se entregará durante una conferencia de un día sobre Los Retos de la Justicia Transicional en México organizada por Notre Dame en la Ciudad de México. Al convocar a un grupo de profesionales, miembros del gobierno entrante de México, grupos de víctimas y sus familias, académicos internacionales y mexicanos así como miembros de la sociedad civil mexicana, la conferencia explorará la forma en que podría implementarse un proceso de verdad, justicia y reconciliación para las víctimas de los 12 años de guerra contra el narcotráfico en el país.

Las pérdidas incluyen más de 130,000 homicidios relacionados con conflictos criminales, más de 30,000 desapariciones, algunas forzadas, y más de 320,000 personas desplazadas a la fecha.

El Notre Dame Award fue entregado por primera vez en 1992 y se reactivó recientemente para honrar a las “mujeres y hombres cuya vida y acciones han mostrado dedicación ejemplar a los ideales fundamentales de la Universidad: fe, indagación, educación, justicia, servicio público, paz y preocupación por los más vulnerables”.

In announcing the award, Notre Dame President , said the University is recognizing the group’s “tireless efforts on behalf of the families of victims, its heroic witness to human dignity and its service to the noble cause of justice itself.”

Previous recipients of the Notre Dame Award have included President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter, Mother Theresa, John Hume of Northern Ireland, Vinko Cardinal Puljic, Archbishop of Sarajevo, and most recently, Judge Sergio Moro of Brazil. This is the first time the award will be presented to a Mexican individual or group.

“The previous recipients, each in their own way, have been pillars of conscience and integrity,” said Father Jenkins, who will present the award Oct. 16 in Mexico City. “The University of Notre Dame recognizes that the Colectivo’s courageous work has drawn needed attention to victims’ disappearances, and has helped to relieve some of the suffering visited upon the families of the victims of such intolerable violence. The Colectivo has made a marked difference for all Mexicans and for humankind at-large in our universal thirst for justice.”

Solecito Colectivo de Veracruz started as a group of eight mothers in 2014 who decided to dig in areas rumored to be mass graves in search of human remains. They raised the funds needed to pay for the searches and initially received no help or recognition from the state government or justice system in Veracruz.

Then in 2016, the group received a huge tip from an organized crime source: a map depicting the exact locations of more than 120 clandestine graves in an area of Veracruz city known as Colinas de Santa Fe. The group’s search so far has led to some 300 bodies and thousands of fragments of remains. With the discovery of one of Mexico’s largest mass graves, authorities now work with Colectivo Solecito in removal once they encounter remains.

There are many such groups of families around the country searching for their loved ones. Colectivo Solecito right now is emblematic of this national plight because of the magnitude of the graves in Veracruz, and the group’s demand that state authorities respond.

��“We recognize the Colectivo’s steadfast faith and tenacity,” Father Jenkins said. “It inspires our students to engage the world as forces for good when confronted with injustice and suffering.”

The award will be presented during a one-day conference on The Challenges of Transitional Justice in Mexico organized by Notre Dame in Mexico City. Convening a group of Notre Dame faculty, ��international practitioners, members from the incoming Mexican government, groups of victims and their families, international and Mexican scholars and members of Mexican civil society, the conference will explore how a process of truth, justice, and reconciliation for the victims of the country’s 12-year drug war may be implemented.����

Casualties include over 130,000 homicides related to criminal conflicts, more than 30,000 disappearances, some forced, and more than 320,000 displaced people to date. Authorities in general have turned a blind eye to these abuses, and in some cases have been perpetrators. As a result, the push for Mexico to deal with its human rights abuses has come from civil society and groups like Colectivo Solecito, which have decided to take the search for the missing into their own hands.

The Notre Dame Award was first given in 1992 and recently was revived to honor the “women and men whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals for which the University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”