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The Catholic sister, who grew up in a poor Mayan family of migrant workers in Guatemala, knows firsthand about the horrors of war.
During a brutal civil war from 1960 to 1996 between the military and guerrillas in the Central American country, her community, the Sisters of the Holy Family, aided families who became refugees in their own country as the result of scorched-earth campaigns that ravaged rural communities.
"They were fleeing from massacres and genocide. We would hide them and care for them." Sister Cipriano said last week in a phone interview from her monastery in Santa Cruz, Guatemala, in the Department of Quiché.
Sister Cipriano, 54, will speak on "After the Violence in Guatemala: Women's Cooperatives as Sowers of Hope" at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Stahr Auditorium at Franklin & Marshall College.
Quiché, the poorest department in Guatemala with the most indigenous people, suffered the most during the war, with 250,000 people killed and 440 Mayan villages destroyed.
"The guerrillas were very active there because of the extreme poverty," she said. "That's why people suffered more than any other area."
In 2001, Sister Cipriano established the "Women's Project" to lift women and children out of abject poverty, domestic violence and illiteracy.
The project now has 14 cooperatives in remote mountain villages that help more than 350 women, mostly single mothers who have been widowed or deserted, become self-supporting by baking bread, making jewelry, growing fruits and vegetables and raising farm animals.
"The project also changes women's mentality, (giving them) self-esteem, teaching them that they are human beings, not passive beings but a part of the community and a family," Sister Cipriano said.
Wednesday's free event is sponsored by F&M's economics, history, international studies and modern language departments and its Center for Liberal Arts and Society.
Sister Cipriano's appearance is among a series of events marking F&M's Human Rights Awareness Week, from Monday to Friday, sponsored by the Ware Institute for Civic Engagement.
At F&M, Sister Cipriano also will speak about the consequences of the civil war in Guatemala.
"A lot of young people are alcoholics," she said. "I see psychological problems from war. People are still suffering. They have no hope."
Shihoko Niikawa, of Washington, D.C., is sponsoring Sister Cipriano's two-week trip to the United States and will accompany her to Lancaster.
Niikawa, a human rights activist from Japan, met Sister Cipriano in 1999 and accompanied her to present the "Recovery of Historical Memory" project in Japan in 2000.
She has been supporting Sister Cipriano's project since then and helped her obtain a grant from Catholic Charities of Japan for the project.
Sister Cipriano said that she has to raise her own support for the project.
"Because of machismo among male clergy (in Guatemala), they don't value working with women," she said.
Karen Lydon, of York, arranged Sister Cipriano's appearance here. She is an associate member of the Sisters of Charity in Bronx, N.Y., which aids the dwindling Santa Cruz community, with 55 sisters worldwide.During a two-week visit to Quiché in August 2007, Lydon agreed to help Sister Cipriano provide education for the women in the project.
With a grant from the Sisters of Charity, Lydon established a satellite computer learning center in a project village in August 2008.
"To do this was nothing short of a miracle," she said.
