Heidi Kuhn arrived in Sacramento on a rainy April day ready to ignite Catholic women to work for peace.

By the time she was finished, Kuhn had launched a campaign to remove land mines in Iraq in honor of the late Pope John Paul II.

Kuhn, the founder of Roots of Peace, a California-based nonprofit organization dedicated to turning fields of land mines into productive agricultural use, was the keynote speaker at the annual convention of the Sacramento Diocesan Council of Catholic Women, held on April 8, the day of Pope John Paul II’s funeral.

“Removing seeds of destruction and planting seeds of hope was the vision of this great leader,” Kuhn said. “It is only fitting we honor his legacy by removing the perils of land mines from the soil in war-torn regions.”

Begun eight years ago, Roots of Peace has raised more than $1 million to remove land mines in Croatia, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Roots of Peace is replanting the land with grapes, wheat, cherries, walnuts and other food crops.

Kuhn told the more 60 Catholic women gathered from the diocese’s nine deaneries that a grassroots campaign started in Sacramento could “go out the door to parishes throughout the state, throughout the country into the world.”

She proposed that a Roots of Peace fund-raising effort support the removal of land mines in Croatia to clear the land for a field of peace to be named in honor of Pope John Paul II.

“The people of Croatia will not only see the good face of Americans but see the compassion we have as Catholics,” she said.

Kuhn, a Marin County mother of four children, founded Roots of Peace in 1997. Since that time the organization has raised more than $250,000 to assist with the United Nation’s Adopt-a-Minefield effort to eliminate an estimated 70 million land mines in more than 70 countries.

More than 400 California vintners have pledged their support for Roots of Peace, which is planting grapes in Afghanistan, orchards in Croatia, rice in Cambodia, fruit in Angola and wheat in Iraq.

Kuhn’s vision for Roots of Peace really was born when she was just a five-year-old attending kindergarten at Dominican Garden School in San Rafael.

“All of a sudden something very different happened. All the mommies and daddies showed up and had tears running down their cheeks,” said Kuhn, who asked her teacher, Sister Patricia Lyons, how to stop everyone from crying.

“She quietly and lovingly cupped my face in her hands and said, ‘Go home and pray for peace.’ John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.”

That night Kuhn prayed and in the middle of the night remembers waking to see the image of “a beautiful woman with kind eyes” saying words that would guide her life, “Peace, peace, and only peace.”

What was in her heart was galvanized into action 17 years ago when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

“I prayed as I went under the knife if God granted me the gift of life I would do something special with it,” Kuhn said.

In 1997, the cancer survivor received a telephone call that would give her the opportunity to fulfill that promise. It also literally transformed her life. It was a request to host a reception for a delegation of land mine activists speaking in San Francisco.

“When I heard about what land mines do to innocent people, it changed my heart forever,” Kuhn said. “From that point on it has been nothing short of a miracle.”

Among the first Napa Valley vintners supporting Roots of Peace were Robert Mondavi, founder of Robert Mondavi Winery and Mike Grgich, owner of Grgich Hills Winery.

Grgich, who was born in Croatia, accompanied a Roots of Peace delegation to his homeland in 2000.

“I couldn’t say no. My desire was to help my country get rid of the dying,” Grgich said. “Bad human beings put those land mines in the ground and some good human beings needed to take them out.”

Kuhn and her then 13-year-old daughter, Kyleigh, led a tour of the Medari vineyard in Dragalic, site of what would be their first minefield cleanup.

The villagers they met had farmed the land for thousands of years and had been forced to make a decision of whether to starve or take the risk of stepping on a land mine to cultivate their fields.

Kuhn will never forget her conversation with one Croatian grandmother, who with her husband, had been removing land mines in order to plant vegetables on their land. Just weeks earlier while the couple were planting, the woman heard her husband start the tractor followed seconds later by a loud boom.

“Our mission to Croatia was in the spirit of turning blood into wine to heal the wounds of war,” said Kuhn of the Napa Valley grape vines she would plant during the trip. “No one should ever have to go pick up their husband in a hundred pieces.”

Two years ago Kuhn and Kyleigh teamed up again to found “Making Change Work,” a student-to-student humanitarian program in which schools’ penny collections help fund safe schools and playgrounds in war-torn countries.

In March 2004, Kuhn and Kyleigh, members of St. Raphael Parish in San Rafael, presented a $70,000 check to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to help rid the world of land mines, funds collected by students in Marin County.

Toni Malik, outgoing president of the SDCCW, said member response to Kuhn’s initiative to create a field of peace in memory of Pope John Paul II received an overwhelming response. Members have already begun networking with other Catholic groups and organizations nationally.

Affiliates are taking the message of Roots of Peace back to local communities throughout the diocese and plans are being made to bring Kuhn to the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations when it meets for the first time in the United States in June 2006.

“This is an opportunity to help people regenerate their lives after war,” Malik said. “It allows people to become productive in their own country again.”

For more information on Roots of Peace, call (415) 455-8008 or visit the Web site: www.rootsofpeace.org.

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