Moments in Ministry

Moments in Ministry San Felipe de Neri School, Albuquerque, New Mexico

By S. Judith Metz

S. Mary Nolasco Sanchez ministered at San Felipe de Neri on four separate occasions.

San Felipe’s new elementary school building was completed in 1959.

S. Ann Reimund taught at San Felipe School from 1972-’82 and again from 1985-’88.

1881

1883

1906

1927

1954

1959

1988

Six Sisters of Charity opened San Felipe under the leadership of S. Mary Josephine Irwin. The school consisted of Public School #1 and a select school for girls. One of the few schools in Albuquerque at the time, it served students of all denominations, ethnic groups, and income levels.

The San Felipe Sisters, under the leadership of S. Blandina Segale, opened the Wayfarers’ House to serve abandoned children, sick vagabonds, and “all other emergencies.”

Due to changing conditions in the city, the Sisters withdrew from Public School #1. San Felipe parochial school then opened under the direction of Sisters Mary Renetta Hughes and Mary Nolasco Sanchez. S. Mary Nolasco served four different times at San Felipe totaling 35 years. Noted for her guidance, concern and love for the students, she was a legend in the parish. One former student remembered, “She never got old, remaining youthful looking and vibrant.”

Outgrowing the buildings in Old Town Plaza, the school relocated to the old courthouse a few blocks away.

A new school building on the old courthouse grounds was erected and two years later a junior high school was opened there.

A new elementary school building was completed. When five Sisters, five lay teachers, and 400 children moved, each student picked up his or her desk and belongings and walked to the new building. Everything was transferred by 11 a.m., and the cafeteria served hot lunches for 25 cents that day.

The last Sister of Charity left San Felipe School when S. Ann Reimund moved to a new ministry.

Moving Into Our Future

By S. Joanne Burrows

The recent decision to bring the Motherhouse’s Seton Hall down was years in the making but, once made, now frees us to think anew about how our facilities can best serve our life and ministry as we move into our future.

The Motherhouse Property Planning Committee (MPPC) has worked throughout the fall to gather information about our facilities and how we use them. We have walked its corridors and tunnels, conversed with Sisters about their ministries here, distributed surveys asking about future living plans, explored staff needs for spaces, tossed around possibilities, and drafted a Request for Proposals for the demolition of Seton Hall.

Some conclusions for the next five to 10 years have emerged over the fall.

Our current facilities offer ample space and we do not •

need to build a new facility at this time. The Immaculate Conception Chapel and the Dining •

Room will serve as the core around which our communal life on the campus will be oriented. As our numbers decrease by half over the next decade, •

we will vacate Sisters’ residential areas from west to east concentrating residential areas around this Chapel/Dining Room core. The goal is to fully utilize Motherhouse East and Center and discontinue use of Marian Hall rooms for Sisters as need allows. Moving forward, we need better utilization of the •

Assisted Living areas in Mother Margaret Hall by Sisters for whom such an environment is appropriate. After exploring alternate uses of St. Mary’s Hall, the •

third and fourth floors will remain residential areas. Regina Hall and McGree Hall (the old laundry) will •

remain and their future usage reconsidered. Space for overnight guests connects closely with the need for Sisters’ residential areas. Seton Hall, even with its many shortcomings, offered a wealth of hospitality space that we could not recreate. For the next several years, rooms available

for overnight accommodations will be limited. We are not accepting reservations for Seton Hall after November 2020. St. Mary’s Hall third and fourth floors will provide 12 rooms with half baths and shared showers for guests. As the 22 rooms with full baths in Marian West become available, they can be used to accommodate Sisters visiting or on retreat. We will be surveying our Sisters in Cincinnati to identify hospitality options in their homes for our Sisters visiting the Mount.

Decisions about where offices will be located have yet to be made. The particular needs of the Archives repository pushes determining its location to the front of the line. Structural engineers are helping us identify areas in the Motherhouse that cannot accommodate the collection. We are looking at possible office layouts in several locations on the first and second floor of Marian Hall and Motherhouse Center to see what might fit where and how the areas could be configured to encourage greater synergies among offices. The sequential nature of this process may require some temporary moves. Other moves may be necessitated by the needs of regular day-to-day functioning. The Leadership Council approaches this planning process as more than simply relocating offices. This is an opportunity to rethink our facilities and how best to use them to promote our life together and to continue living our mission. Not everything we do should continue or continue on our campus. Our needs and abilities are changing and our spaces should reflect and support our new realities going forward. The small group process and Spring Sisters Forum are important next steps in the ongoing communal conversation needed for the critical work of rethinking the Mount. Neither the process nor the forum seeks input about what to put where. Rather, the focus of both will be how we live our lives together, what we see as central elements of community moving forward, and how space can best support those aspects of community. We look forward to engaging with all of you as we work together to plan for the Mount’s future.

Celebrating a Milestone: Wishing S. Bernadette Kambeitz a Happy 100th Birthday

The secret to living a long, healthy life is a question asked by many. Some will tell you much of it lies in eating well, exercising, or getting plenty of sleep. But for S. Bernadette Kambeitz, the oldest living Sister of Charity in age and in years as a Community member, the key to living a long life can be found in travel, embracing change and building loving relationships. On Dec. 13, 2019, S. Bernadette celebrated 100 years of life. Those who know her can certainly affi rm that she has reached this centennial milestone by being her joyful self and sharing that light with all those she has walked with through the years. Born and raised in Springfi eld, Ohio, S. Bernadette was the oldest child of Albert and Elizabeth Kambeitz. She and her sister, Martha, attended elementary school at St. Joseph’s and high school at Catholic Central where they were taught by the Sisters of Charity for all 12 years. S. Bernadette fondly remembers riding her bike past the convent as a little girl and witnessing their joy. What they had, she wanted, and following her high school graduation in 1937, S. Bernadette entered the Sisters of Charity at the age of 17. Travel S. Bernadette earned her degree in education from The Athenaeum of Ohio in Cincinnati, graduating in 1942; thus began her 30-year education ministry teaching chemistry, physics and math in schools throughout the Midwest and West. Sister acknowledged the opportunities the Community provided her in those years, teaching at schools in Ohio, Michigan and New Mexico, and credits those ministries as life-giving as each afforded her a broader perspective of the world and opportunities to create deep relationships with those she met. Embracing Change S. Bernadette once said that her life has been characterized by a never-ending series of changes, changes that steered her into three different careers. While she certainly met a lot of challenges along the way, the changes, she felt, encouraged her to grow and reach her potential. In September 1974, after 30 years in the fi eld of education, S. Bernadette began 15 years of service in the Radial Immunoassay lab at St. Joseph Hospital in Mount Clemens, Michigan. It was there that she met Denise Donahue. The pair quickly became close friends, and as Donahue explained S. Bernadette was close with all of the med-techs in the lab, the matriarch of the group. “She was a friend to everyone,” Donahue said. “If you were down at the cafeteria, she would sit down and start talking … She was involved in everybody’s life – in a good way. She treated us like family, and we did the same to her.” Building Relationships Those who know S. Bernadette can speak on her ability to make a person feel as though they are the most important person in her world. She attributes that character trait to her father, whom she frequently remembers for his joyful, good-natured spirit. As a Sister of Charity, she lives the mission and charism with her compassionate heart and commitment to others. S. Karen Hawver, who knows S. Bernadette from her years growing up in Springfi eld, had the privilege of living and ministering near Sister in Michigan for more than 30 years. She says that she has never seen such devotion and love as the hospital employees showed to S. Bernadette. In fact Bernie (as she affectionately calls her) would babysit for the children of the hospital doctors. One particular family, the Hauranis, entrusted her with their four children. Following their unexpected deaths, “Bernie stayed with the children through the funerals and many weeks afterwards. She occupied the parent place of honor at every wedding for all of the children in later years. To this day she is very special to the Haurani children and their families.” Compassionate, kind, selfl ess – the secret to living a long life from S. Bernadette’s perspective is simply living life. She gives herself to others and those who have the honor and privilege of knowing her quickly learn that she values the person they are. Many celebrations took place throughout the Motherhouse in honor of S. Bernadette Kambeitz’s 100th birthday.

Living Lightly on Earth: EarthConnection’s Sister Caroljean Willie

Sister Caroljean (Cj) Willie is the program director at EarthConnection, an environmental center affi liated with the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and adjacent to Mount St. Joseph university in Western Hills. Sister Cj brings to EarthConnection her years of multicultural work experience from working with teachers in developing countries such as East Cebal, uganda, Guatemala, and Mexico; her Peace Corps service on the island of Saint lucia in the Eastern Caribbean; and her work for eight years at the united Nations as the N.G.O. representative of the Sisters of Charity Federation which includes 14 congregations working in 26 countries. As an educator, Sister Cj quoted a teacher who said, “Everything you teach has to have hooks on it that attach to something else in someone’s experience,” which has infl uenced her environmental sustainability efforts to encourage communities to work together. Interview by Kelly Carrigan. Photography by Nicole Mayes.

How did you end up in Cincinnati? I had gone to college here – at Xavier university – and so when I fi nished my Peace Corps experience, I came back here and met the Sisters of Charity, but then worked at St. Joseph Orphanage where they happened to be so that is how I ended up in Cincinnati.

What led you to EarthConnection and what is their mission? I realized that one of my greatest interests at the united Nations was in the area of environmental sustainability. I had the opportunity to attend a conference in Bonn, Germany, put on by the u.N. Environment Programme as well as attend the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro and to serve on the Committee in the u.N. itself. I knew that we had EarthConnection – Sister Paula Gonzalez had started it quite a number of years ago and she essentially started it as a place to learn to live lightly on Earth. I talked to Sister Paula, and she was really excited about the possibility of doing programs. I looked at some of the things we had been working on at the u.N. and looked at how we might bring those back to EarthConnection. I’ve really tried to do a variety of different kinds of programs to appeal to different audiences. Once a month we host a movie night called “Movies that Matter,” and for the last four months we have done one called “Sinking Cities” where we looked at the realities of what was happening in london, New York, Tokyo, and Miami and got people engaged in conversation afterward. I also work on the Sustainability Committee at [Mount St. Joseph] where we’re looking at different ways of engaging students in environmental activities and fi nding a tremendous amount of interest and support in young people.

I also served on the Interfaith Committee at the United Nations, and one of the things that we had done there was have a monthly meeting on spirituality and sustainability. We tried to look at how our spirituality influences our care for creation and we discovered that it was a wonderful way of getting to know each other’s faiths since there was no doctrine involved. I’ve tried to replicate that here at EarthConnection. So far, I’ve had speakers from the Buddhist community, the Hindu community – actually the Hindu monk that I had come for that talk was one of my colleagues at the United Nations and he came from New York and talked about the Hindu connection to the environment, but he was also one of the lead authors on the Hindu document on environmental sustainability. It was wonderful to have him. I’ve had the Zoroastrian community, the Sikh community, and the Catholic community. I am still working on this year to invite the Muslim community, the Jewish community, and a variety of Christian traditions because it is something that we can embrace together.

What other local communities and organizations do you engage in your work? You’ve talked about the ones in Ohio, but what about other ones nationally and internationally at EarthConnection? Internationally, I work with micro-financing partners in Africa, but that takes me to Africa. I work with a number of micro-financing projects there – Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. It’s more through the Sisters of Charity than it is with EarthConnection, but that helps me to come back and be able to talk with people about the realities of climate change for people who are suffering far more than we are. For instance, when I was in Tanzania last year, in the Masai territory (for the Masai people, cows are their lives), we were driving along a road and there were six or seven Masai men with a couple of cows. As I watched, one of the cows fell over and died right in front of me, and they just all gathered around and looked because that was their livelihood. The drought was so severe. In India, it was two different things: In the north, there was drought everywhere, but in the south, there was so much flooding. In both cases, you had hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides because they couldn’t feed their families. So these are real issues that are happening out there, and I think it’s important for people here to know about them. I firmly believe that we see from where we stand, so I don’t look at people as being uncaring or unfeeling – they simply don’t know.

You do outreach with children, too, such as the Girl Scouts – can you talk about that? I have done stuff with the Girl Scouts now at all different age levels. We offer an EarthConnection patch if they come and learn about environmental sustainability even at the 5-year-old level; we have a program for that. What we do is we show them around EarthConnection and show them our geothermal solar energy and what that’s all about. In addition to the patch, what we have Girl Scout troops coming for now is to earn some badges – we do outdoor art, gardening, and flowers. We’ve developed programs around all of those at different age levels.

And then you have your garden here. Are you involved with that? Sister Winnie Brubach, the sister with whom I work here at EarthConnection, is the master gardener. We grow about 800 to 1,000 pounds of veggies each year, and the vegetables go to the Good Samaritan TriHealth Free Health Center in Lower Price Hill. One of our sisters who works there is a nutritionist, so she and some of the other people there wash all the veggies, bag them, and give recipes to the people and so they get fresh veggies every week of the summer.

Could you talk a little bit about how the building that EarthConnection is in has used recycled materials? Sister Paula wanted everything that was used to construct this building be recycled. It began with a four-car garage – that was the original structure that she started with. Then, she decided that it needed to be larger so she asked many builders what the most permanent type of structure was; what would last the longest? They told her timber frame, so the added-on part that has the offices, the resource center, the bathrooms, the kitchen, and everything is all timber frame. There is not a single nail in the entire building. It is all pegs and was assembled elsewhere

and brought here like an Amish barn raising. I wasn’t here at the time, but they said only one hole was 1/8 of an inch off. Everything else fi t perfectly. That is pretty incredible. When it came to furnishing the place, they were redoing the dorms at our university across the street, so she took everything they were getting rid of in terms of bookcases, shelves, and tables. The carpeting is made out of 2-liter pop bottles and has held up very well – it’s been here for 20 years. The tiles on the fl oor were made using recycled glass. The building is also partially powered by both solar and geothermal energy. She was trying to use the building as an experiment because there wasn’t much solar or geothermal in Cincinnati in the early ’90s, but we have solar panels providing some – but not all – of the energy we use for this building.

Please speak to some of the influential female mentors in your life. Well, certainly Sister Paula Gonzalez. In 1969, when we fi rst began to see pictures of the Earth from the moon, she gave up her professorship over at [Mount St. Joseph] and said, “I need to devote the rest of my life to that,” and until the day she died, she did just that – to really help people understand what a critical juncture we were at in Earth’s history. She was one of the founders of Ohio Interfaith Power and light. It’s now a very strong organization throughout the state that helps different religious traditions and different faith communities to use more environmentally sustainable methods in their parishes and congregations. Michele Bachelet, the former president of Chile, was certainly an infl uence on my time at the u.N. She was the fi rst head of u.N. Women, which is a group of different u.N. women organizations that were all doing different things and combined under one to make a stronger organization, and she was a wonderful fi rst leader for that. Mary Robinson, who was the former president of Ireland and just recently wrote a book on climate justice – I certainly admire her work as president and later in working with the u.N. and these days on climate justice. I think people are beginning to see the connection between poverty and justice.

How would you like to make an impact in Cincinnati? I don’t know that I personally need to make an impact in Cincinnati. I simply want to be able to share the experiences that I have had and help people come to an understanding that we are all responsible for what is happening in the world. We can’t keep blaming somebody else for what is happening. We all have to take a look at our own lifestyle and recognize that the lifestyle of the average American is simply not sustainable. It would take anywhere from three to fi ve planets to support our lifestyle if everyone were to live the way we do.

Is there anything else you’d like to include? I would like people to know about the programs that we are doing here at EarthConnection, and that we are available to do programs on their site, as well. If you go to our website it lists a number of different topics that we can speak on. And most of all, that we are all in this together, so it is going to take all of us doing our part to make a more sustainable world.