It sounds like the opening of a joke: 50 Catholic sisters walk into a restaurant…
But there was no punchline. For the last week and a half, Catholic Extension Society arranged an unprecedented gathering of 50 missionary sisters from Latin America in Chicago. Accompanied by a few Mother Superiors, these sisters from 12 different congregations were in town to participate in a six-day silent retreat, attend pastoral training programs and host another retreat for 20 young women who are considering religious life.
Oh, they had some serious fun in the Second City, too. They attended a Chicago Cubs game and cheered the team to victory. They met Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago and chancellor of Catholic Extension Society. They tried some authentic Chicago-style deep dish pizza (Unsurprisingly, they loved it!). They held a concert at a local parish and sang religious and cultural songs from their homelands. They toured Millennium Park and spontaneously broke into song under the park’s famous Bean sculpture, serenading tourists who eagerly captured video and photos of the moment.
Everywhere they went, people took notice. In a bustling city like Chicago, there’s something decidedly startling about seeing a sister in a habit or a sister wearing a crucifix around her neck. And when you see a long parade of them strolling through a park together, you really start to wonder what’s going on.
For the last three years, they have participated in Catholic Extension Society’s U.S.-Latin American Sisters Exchange program that funds religious sisters from Latin American congregations to minister among Latino immigrant populations in 12 poor mission dioceses across the United States. Leaving the familiarity of their Latin American countries of origin, these women have taken a leap of faith to spend five years ministering to some of the poorest Catholic communities in America.
To do so, they have taken classes at Boston College and the Mexican American Catholic College in San Antonio — learning about the challenges facing the largely Hispanic communities they are now serving as well as improving their English language proficiency, pastoral skills and knowledge of American culture.
At lunch on Thursday, Sister Maria, who hails from Mexico shared her experience serving at a Catholic parish in the Diocese of Monterey. With her remarkably solid English-speaking skills, we talked about her call to religious life, her love for the people she is serving and the new experiences she is having through the exchange program.
Sister Maria spoke passionately about the families and children she has befriended at the parish where she serves — the next generation of the Catholic Church. She talked about the difficulty of taking driver’s education classes in English while she was still learning the language. She told us about her ministry to Catholic migrant workers who spend long hours picking fruit in the California fields. She recalled her excitement at seeing snow for the first time while taking classes at Boston College last winter.
Like all of the sisters in this cohort, Sister Maria exudes joy. The sisters’ joy — brought about by their love for God, their vocation and the people they feel blessed to serve — is so evident and overflowing that it spread easily to those they encountered last weekend in Chicago.
This contagious happiness is what makes them effective evangelizers in the poor dioceses where they serve, and what inspired 20 young women from these dioceses to attend a vocation retreat in Chicago on Memorial Day weekend to learn more about the ultimate source of these sisters’ joy. Sister Maria beamed with pride as she mentioned that her diocese was sending six “jovenes” to the retreat — young women who became intrigued by religious life after meeting Sister Maria and the two other sisters serving in Monterey.
Each of them represents a vital ministry to thousands of Catholics throughout the United States who have a far different life experience from those of us in cities like Chicago.
These adventurous and faith-filled women have willingly chosen to follow God’s call to a life of service — a call that has led them to a new country to help bring others to Christ. It was wonderful to experience their joy firsthand and to hear about all the ways that God is working through them. The Catholic Church in America is blessed to have such joyful ambassadors evangelizing throughout the country.
