A song e h t r fo g n u s un P BY ARTHUR KNAP
G
od’s call to serve refugees came to Sister Marilyn Lacey in a dream. In it, Chai, a 6-year-old refugee from Laos, found Lacey and ran to her with his four brothers and sisters. Lacey asked Chai why they were all there, and the child replied, “we are here to teach
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you a new way of loving.” Twenty-eight years later, Lacey tells this story before a captivated crowd of students, faculty, staff and friends at Regis University. The large room falls silent as she finishes, each person pausing to listen to his/her own heart’s call to serve.
REGIS UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MAGAZINE FALL 2017
In October, Sister Marilyn Lacey came to Regis as one of four finalists and left as the ultimate winner of the 2017 Opus Prize, a $1 million honor recognizing unsung heroes for their efforts to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. She accepted the award on behalf of her nonprofit, Mercy Beyond
Borders. After working with refugees around the world, Lacey founded her nonprofit in 2008 to address the worst crisis she had witnessed: the plight of the uneducated and unloved women and girls of South Sudan and Haiti. Mercy Beyond Borders currently supports over 1,400 students in their programs ranging