Featuring two books about Sister Maria Rosa Leggol's gutsy crusade to rescue, raise, and change the lives of tens of thousands of at-risk Honduran children.

One day in 1966, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a short, plump Catholic nun bent on funding her mission sprinted across the airport tarmac to stop a plane from taking off. On board was the country’s richest man. The help she received from him that day triggered a dramatic chain of events resulting in the rescue and education of more than 80,000 destitute children in the second- poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Since then, the indomitable Sister Maria Rosa Leggol’s Sociedad Amigos de los Niños (SAN) organization has blossomed into a network of homes, schools, farms, clinics, and micro-businesses that empower poor Hondurans to live and work with dignity, breaking generational cycles of poverty.

One day in 1966, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a short, plump Catholic nun bent on funding her mission sprinted across the airport tarmac to stop a plane from taking off. On board was the country’s richest man. The help she received from him that day triggered a dramatic chain of events resulting in the rescue and education of more than 80,000 destitute children in the second- poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Since then, the indomitable Sister Maria Rosa Leggol’s Sociedad Amigos de los Niños (SAN) organization has blossomed into a network of homes, schools, farms, clinics, and micro-businesses that empower poor Hondurans to live and work with dignity, breaking generational cycles of poverty.

One day in 1966, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a short, plump Catholic nun bent on funding her mission sprinted across the airport tarmac to stop a plane from taking off. On board was the country’s richest man. The help she received from him that day triggered a dramatic chain of events resulting in the rescue and education of more than 80,000 destitute children in the second- poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Since then, the indomitable Sister Maria Rosa Leggol’s Sociedad Amigos de los Niños (SAN) organization has blossomed into a network of homes, schools, farms, clinics, and micro-businesses that empower poor Hondurans to live and work with dignity, breaking generational cycles of poverty.

"Madre: The Nun Who Was Mother To The Orphans Of Honduras"

Madre: The Nun Who Was Mother to the Orphans of Honduras celebrates one fearless woman’s great goodness, charisma, and chutzpah in challenging endemic corruption and machismo for the sake of her country’s most vulnerable children. Always Room For One More: Wit and Wisdom From the Mother Teresa of Honduras, a companion volume to Madre, will feature more than 100 of Sister Maria Rosa’s quotes, quips, sayings and stories about essential life lessons like how to cherish children, how to help the poor, and how to discern God’s plan for your life.

“The elements of this book highlight the admirable work of a woman who embraced the crucifix… and worked to show the face of God in the midst of her every work…. I hope that the life and works of this servant of the Lord serve as an inspiration for every Christian and person of good will who feels called to do good for a more just society.”

—Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga, S.D.B.,
Archbishop of Tegucigalpa

"Always Room For One More: Wit and Wisdom From the Mother Teresa of Honduras"

Always Room For One More: Wit and Wisdom From the Mother Teresa of Honduras, a companion volume to Madre, will feature more than 100 of Sister Maria Rosa’s quotes, quips, sayings and stories about essential life lessons like how to cherish children, how to help the poor, and how to discern God’s plan for your life.

Excerpt:

“To save these young children living on the city streets, you have to have strength and too much love to give each child all the love he has been missing since birth. You almost need to put them back into there womb to be born again, to help grow that dignity inside them.”
–Sister Maria Rosa Leggol

“Christ said, ‘Pick up your cross and follow Me.’ He did not say to drag it and complain!”
–Sister Maria Rosa

About the Author

Writer and mission trip leader Kathy Martin O’Neil sets the unlikely triumphs of this “Angel of the Poor” against the backdrop of Honduras’s deprivation, broken families, and gang violence that send desperate young migrants fleeing for their lives. Drawing from more than a decade of mission travel to SAN, she captures Sister Maria Rosa’s magnetic allure and Franciscan wisdom on how best to change hearts and stand with the marginalized people of the world.