40 Years Ago, Brave Nuns Shielded a Maryknoll Msgr. From a Guatemalan Hit Squad

n the fall of 1984, Msgr. John Vesey was a Maryknoll missionary working with the indigenous people of southwestern Guatemala, but he became deathly ill with pneumonia. While bedridden, he slipped in and out of consciousness.
In moments of lucidity he saw, standing over him, Sister Alba Estela Orellana and her fellow Carmelite nuns. The Guatemalan sisters helped him minister to the Tz’utujil people of Santiago Atitlán. But Msgr.