Father Peter Dougherty is traveling to India to receive an international peace award. A Lansing resident, Dougherty will receive the award for his lifelong devotion to fostering peace.
According to excerpts from the article:
Dougherty, who was featured in the recent Michael Moore film “Capitalism: A Love Story,” leaves next week to receive the International Award for Contributions to the Promotion of Ghandian Values from the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. While in India, he will tour the country and use it as a chance to “network” with groups working towards peace in that country.
The priest started his calling in peace work at the height of the Vietnam War protest era, where he said he was confronted with the cycle of violence. He has since run a special ministry dedicated to peace work including the development and launching of MPT. MPT regularly sends teams to Palestine and Israel to work for peace in the region. It will dispatch a team to Juarez, Mexico in Nov. to explore the possibility of intervening there.
Dougherty is being honored, in part, for his work with MPT, but also for the role he played in the creation of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international organization founded on the Ghandi principal of Shanti Sena, or Peace Army. The irony is that Dougherty was to travel to India for the group’s first meeting, but the Indian government refused to grant him a visa because of his history of protests and arrests.
While Dougherty says the award is an “honor,” he said, “I wish everybody could get their peace award.”
Read the entire article here.
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