The year was 1986. Sister Genevieve Ram Lal was being driven away from Lahore High Court when she noticed armed men in a car following her.
“We were fighting a case for abducted Christian brick makers in a nearby district. The Franciscan priest, sitting behind the steering wheel, knew the streets well and managed to lose the attackers.
We know they were brick kiln owners,” recalled the 59-year-old nun of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary congregation. “Fact-finding missions in brick kilns were always under the shadow of guns. The armed guards of kiln owners circle around as we collected interviews. The victims usually change the narrative by the time human rights workers reach them,” she said.
Presently, 58 nuns from her congregation serve in the fields of education, medicine and pastoral work. According to the latest Catholic directory, 29 women congregations are present in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Over the coming years, Sister Genevieve’s resolution as an activist only grew stronger as she became closely associated with the Protestant’s Young Women’s Christian Association and the Catholic Church’s human rights body, the National Commission for Justice and Peace. In 2012, she became the national director of the Catholic Women’s Organization(CWO) which observes its 10th anniversary in July.
