Background
Hennessey was born on a farm in Manchester, Iowa, in 1932, the thirteenth child of Maurice Hennessey and Anna Killias. She then remained at home for the following year to help her mother.
Hennessey was born on a farm in Manchester, Iowa, in 1932, the thirteenth child of Maurice Hennessey and Anna Killias. She then remained at home for the following year to help her mother.
Hennessey graduated from Saint Patrick"s High School in Ryan, Iowa, at age sixteen.
Their sister Miriam would also leave home and enter a religious institute before Gwen had started school. Hennessey earned a Bachelor"s degree in English literature and education at Briar Cliff College (now Briar Cliff University) in Sioux City, Iowa, which was run by her religious congregation. Her teaching career would include assignments in both Iowa and Illinois.
Activist
While assigned to serve at a school in Chicago, Hennessey became involved with the organization Clergy and Laity Concerned, through which she became active in the nuclear disarmament movement.
Following Chicago, Hennessey helped start the Catholic Peace Ministry in Des Moines, Iowa. She then earned a Master"s degree at the Maryknoll School of Theology in Maryknoll, New New York
During her period on the East Coast, she became co-Director of the Maura Clarke/Ita Ford Center in Brooklyn, New York, and served with the Appalachian Office of Justice and Peace in southwest Virginia. In 1997 Hennessey then became involved in the activity for which she is most widely known, the protests at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the Army"s School of the Americas, a facility for training Latin American soldiers.
The school denies these claims and argues that it helps to spread democracy in Latin America.
She took part in a protest march in the 1960s in Antioch, Illinois. African Americans were banned from the city, and Martin Luther King, Junior. was marching with her. She also helped Cesar Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers, organize migrant workers in California.
lieutenant was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations.
Pacem in terris is Latin for "Peace on Earth". Current status
Hennessey now resides in Sioux City, Iowa, where she now serves as the Director of the Clare Guest House.
She took her final religious vows as a member of the congregation on August 10, 1956, following which, she was assigned to teach.