What's So Blessed About Being Poor?

Overview

An inspiring exploration of how happiness and holiness can exist in the midst of poverty and illness.

This inspiring story of two lay women who have chosen to live among and minister to the poor in East Africa is authored by a Maryknoll lay missioner and a New York attorney who left her law practice to become a lay missioner with the Franciscans. Susan Slavin first met Coralis Salvador while volunteering as a lawuer working in a justice and peace progran in Kenya. Slavin was intrigued by Jesus' beatitude teaching, "blessed are the poor." After approaching this seeming paradox through library research that proved unrewarding, she decided to join Slavador in her ministry to AIDS orphans to try to gain firsthand insights into how the poor can be "blessed." This account tells of their experiences as they worked together with the poor, primarily AIDS orphans, in the slums of Kenya.

Susan Slavin, an attorney in the area of family law and human rights, is now a Franciscan lay missioner. Her home is in New York.

Coralis Salvador, an experienced Maryknoll Lay Missioner, has served for more than a decade in Kenya. Her home is in San Francisco.