Interview with Sister Gloria Liliana Franco Echeverri, ODN, Religious of the Order of the Company of Mary

During the Global Assembly, Sister Gloria Liliana Franco, a religious of the Order of the Company of Mary Our Lady, gave a conference on consecrated life entitled “Women Witnesses of Transforming Hope.”
In her address, she shared a profound reflection on the role of consecrated women in today’s world and on how hope can become a path of personal and community transformation.
Below, we share the interview conducted after her presentation.

Sister Liliana, what does it mean for a consecrated missionary woman to be a witness of hope?

It means embracing our identity, the gift that God gives us when He grants us the possibility of living the fullness of our femininity of who we are and what He desires from us. It means setting out on the journey, understanding that we are a Church on the move, called to stand on those existential and geographical shores where life cries out, waiting for answers, opportunities, and reasons for hope to be reborn.

It means living the fullness of who we are; and we women, from our identity, are called to be artisans of care. To position ourselves as artisans of care means to validate others’ existence, recognize their gifts, accompany their journeys, sustain their hope, and speak words that recreate possibilities. It means helping to generate public policies that improve people’s living conditions, joining others to defend life, justice, and common causes. It means being women according to Jesus’s way and with His heart.

If we had to leave a message of hope and synodality to the world at this historical moment, what would it be?

Our hope is Jesus of Nazareth. Our hope is the experience that life is stronger than death, that beyond every limit there lies an opportunity, a possibility.

The certainty that the night is not final, that crisis is not the end. What is definitive is our ability to unite forces and that is what is deeply synodal to walk together as brothers and sisters until hope is reborn and life conditions for all become those desired by Jesus.

This calls us to work for the Kingdom with awareness of our differences, but from the experience that we are one family.

A message for the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

You, Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, inspired by this charism that God gave you and Mother Cabrini, are called to continue helping us sustain hope in this difficult historical moment, a time marked by the weight of war, exclusionary nationalisms, xenophobia, and the logic of leaders who persist in building walls and stigmatizing others.

You have a charism that makes you guardians of unity, communion, and life, precisely when life is most fragile and most threatened.

My message is this, resist; do not give up on hope; do not give up on the desire to do good, to accompany the poor and the victims, to continue walking with migrants and the sick. My message is: remain united as sisters so that hope may be reborn in our world.