Nun presents anti-torture petition to Pompeo

A Roman Catholic nun on Wednesday presented 4,500 signatures from Kansas Christians to the office of Rep. Mike Pompeo, imploring him to keep his promise not to torture prisoners in his new role as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In his confirmation hearing a week ago, Pompeo told a Senate panel he would “absolutely not” reinstate brutal interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration and since abandoned by the nation’s intelligence agencies. He said he wouldn’t obey even a direct presidential order to torture prisoners and couldn’t imagine that President-elect Donald Trump – who picked him as CIA chief – would give such an order.

“We want him (Pompeo) to keep his promise. Words are easy,” said Sister Bernadine Wessel, shortly after delivering the anti-torture petition signatures to Pompeo’s Wichita congressional field office. “All people are children of God and as Christians we find this (issue) very important.”

“Torture is anything which demeans the human person,” she added. “Torture can be physical, mental in many areas. It’s against U.S. law. It’s against international law. And it’s against God’s law.”

The signatures were gathered by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, an interfaith group formed in 2006 after leaked photos revealed a pattern of physical, mental and sexual abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, where suspected terrorists and other detainees were held during the Iraq War.

Pompeo’s office personnel had no immediate response, but said the signatures would be delivered to the congressman.

Wessel, a sister of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ order, has been a nun for 58 years, spending 35 of those as a missionary in South Korea before returning to Wichita in 2013. Her order is particularly focused on issues involving families, women and children, she said.

In Korea, she was a preschool and kindergarten teacher who helped establish the order of Adorers in that country.

She later started a ground-breaking residential shelter program for women who had been brought to Korea to marry and then been abused by their husbands.

The women were lured from impoverished rural countries across Asia with the promise of a better life married to a Korean man. Many of those marriages went badly because the women were uneducated and didn’t know the language and traditions of their adopted culture.

“Sometimes they ran away and sometimes they were kicked out,” Wessel said.

The shelter program provided education and worked to overcome cultural friction between the husbands and wives so they could be reunited, or helped the women gain the skills and employment to care for themselves and their children on their own, she said.

Since returning to Kansas, she has remained active in helping victims of domestic violence through the Women’s Initiative Network in Wichita.

Wessel said she became fascinated with politics, social justice and human rights at a young age when she took civics courses in junior high school.

“That very much impressed me,” she said. “If I hadn’t joined the convent and become a nun, I’d have probably tried to be a senator or representative.”

This story was originally published January 18, 2017 at 1:01 PM with the headline "Nun presents anti-torture petition to Pompeo."